


the sharpest lives

by dicaeopolis



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (and in the spirit of going full middle-school the title is from the mcr song), (it is), 3rd gym, Agender Akaashi Keiji, Agender Character, Alternate Universe - Sci-fi/Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Wings, Gen, ITS NOT A MAXIMUM RIDE AU!! IT S NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!, M/M, MORE CHARACTERS AND SHIPS TO BE ADDED AS THEY APPEAR, NO KNOWLEDGE OF MAXIMUM RIDE REQUIRED, Other, POV goes back and forth between hinata and tsukishima, im not going to tag all of seijoh and shiratorizawa but they are here, some mentions of character death but none of the major ones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:39:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9215108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dicaeopolis/pseuds/dicaeopolis
Summary: It starts when Hinata Shouyou and Tsukishima Kei fall out of the sky.





	1. tempest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old storms and new friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [listen i know inuoka is the dog but](http://vivasimplemindedness.tumblr.com/post/137014414637/yamagoochles-lets-be-real-lev-isnt-a-cat-hes-a)
> 
> THANKS [BETSY](http://www.twitter.com/owlinaminor) FOR BETAING HIT ME UP ON TWITTER ([main](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis/status/817416514915680256)/[writing livetweets](https://twitter.com/anime_is_shit)) AND TUMBLR ([main](http://dicaeopolis.tumblr.com/)/[haikyuu](http://vivasimplemindedness.tumblr.com/post/155491610568/the-sharpest-lives)) FOR CONTENT

Hinata’s wings were going to rip themselves out of his back.

He would fold them in, if he could - curl himself up and free-fall downwards towards the black carpet of treetops below him. But the jaws of the storm had locked around him, teeth gnawing at his angel-bones and snapping at his feathers, and he couldn’t pull his wings in enough to shut them against his back. Wind howled in his ears, and the sharp rain bit at his exposed skin where his clothing was ripped with holes, tossing his light frame around like a chew toy. The roots of his wings throbbed at the strain.

A sheet of lightning flashed across the heavens, drowning the world for a split-second in awful, sickly light. Almost instantly, a crack of thunder followed, but the brightness had lasted long enough for Hinata to catch sight of a long, skinny figure several hundred yards away. The figure was fighting for purchase in the air, but his limbs were jumbled up like tangled yarn and his wings looked painfully overextended as the storm ripped and bit at them as well.

 _“Tsukishima,”_ Hinata screamed, except the storm swallowed his words up and roared back at him. Nonetheless, Tsukishima's head jerked up, and his eyes swept across the dark, turbulent sky until they found Hinata’s flailing body.

Their eyes locked for one ghastly second - and then the wind abruptly released its grip.

Hinata shrieked again wordlessly as he began to plummet towards Earth. He barely managed to snap his wings shut before the wind built up into its furious rage again, but it was enough to send him into free-fall. The treetops screamed up to meet him, and then pine needles were whipping against his face and his squeezed eyelids. And then he thumped - down between branches - that broke his fall - in painful beats - before his body thudded into the forest floor.

For a few frozen moments, Hinata’s chest rose and fell shallowly, shuddering air into his jarred lungs.

Some thin surface veneer of awareness recognized the rain lessening to a drizzle and then a drip, the cracks of thunder rumbling further away, the mud and pine needles drying where his cheek had slammed into the ground. Beneath that, Hinata struggled with his slippery consciousness, clinging to it with aching fingers as it squirmed for escape. It slithered out of his weakening grasp - he lunged for it once - twice - again-

Sets of footsteps, padding across the forest floor-

And then it was gone, and the last thing he recognized was an indistinct murmur above him, and two large hands sliding underneath him to lift him up. Then - darkness.

* * *

_Hinata’s wings were getting too big for his cage._

_When they’d first put him in here, he’d spent hours straining to touch both sides at a time with the tips of his primary feathers, at the very ends of his wings. A few months ago, he’d managed it for the first time, and screeched so loudly in excitement that Daichi, across the room, had barked at him to shut up. But now, he couldn’t even open them all the way before his primaries were bumping against the sides of the cage, and when he stood up, he had to hunch a little so his head wouldn’t bump into the bars._

_Suddenly, a sharp pain twinged at the tip of his left wing. Hinata yelped and snapped his wings in, turning to glare at Tsukishima, who had pinched his wingtip between two of the bones - right where it hurt. “What was that for!”_

_“Stop sticking your wings into my cage,” Tsukishima said, sounding bored. “I’m trying to sleep.”_

_“I can’t help it! They’re growing!” Hinata attempted to hop up and down to demonstrate his point, then cursed under his breath as his head bumped into the bars above him._

_“How do you think_ I _feel?” Tsukishima shot back. “I’m already a head taller than you are. For that matter, how do you think Yachi feels?” He jerked his head down past the empty cage next to him, towards the one at the end of their row, where a tiny blonde girl was asleep in a heap on the bottom of her cage. “Or Shimizu-san or Azumane-san, for that matter?” Hinata glanced across the dim room to the facing row, where a taller boy and girl were dozing in adjacent cages. “You have the smallest wings here, besides Nishinoya-san.”_

_“Yeah, but I’m also in the smallest cage-”_

_The burgeoning argument was interrupted by the click of the door and the flick of the buzzing fluorescent lights. Hinata’s protest died in his throat. At the end of the row, the rise and fall of Yachi’s breathing stilled._

_Two pairs of footsteps tapped across the floor, towards Hinata’s and Tsukishima’s row. Through the bars at the front of his cage, Hinata could see the hems of their long white coats._

Which ones now? _one whitecoat asked his companion._ All the other five-year-olds?

Ah, just ten and eleven for now. _The locks at the tops of the two empty cages clicked open, and each whitecoat dumped in one small body. Hinata scrambled to the side of his cage opposite Tsukishima and stared in at Kageyama. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and he wrapped his arms around his knees, pulling them tight to his chest as he shivered. On Tsukishima’s other side, Yamaguchi seemed to be in a similar state._ They’re doing the girl last, and then moving on to the six-year-olds and seven-year-olds.

Alright.  _The locks on Kageyama’s and Yamaguchi’s cages clicked shut._

_And then Hinata’s cage was opening, and a pair of large hands were reaching down-_

* * *

Hushed voices.

“The little one looks really bad!”

“Lev, you shouldn’t be excited about that.”

“Do you think he’s going to die?” Lev asked, with only slightly less enthusiasm.

“He’s held out this long,” pointed out a third voice, quieter than the first two but calm with authority.

Hinata Shouyou’s bones ached. His body felt sore and battered, as though he’d been tumbling around in a wind tunnel - unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“Do you think he’s my age?” Lev went on. Judging by the sound, the people speaking were on the other side of the room. The air was warm against Hinata’s face, and sunshine pressed against the backs of his eyelids.

“I’d say eleven or twelve,” the first voice answered. “The tall one might be fourteen or fifteen.”

_The tall one. Tsukishima._

_We’re the same age, you assholes!_

“His breathing is changing!” Lev announced - and in a scramble of steps, his voice was at Hinata’s side. “He’s waking up!”

_But - he was all the way over - how did he hear-?_

Hinata’s eyes fluttered open.

The first thing he saw was an excitable pair of green eyes. The boy leaning over him was long and lanky, with silvery hair and a wide smile. Behind him, Hinata could see what he vaguely recognized as a living room. The room looked old, with worn wooden walls and a battered pair of armchairs. The rug was faded, but not enough to hide its wild, colorful pattern. Two large windows let in sunlight so bright Hinata winced on reflex. A old wooden door was set into one wall, a deep fireplace into another. He was lying on a lumpy sofa in the center of the room, beneath the weight of a scratchy wool blanket that prickled against his legs and arms.

Hinata tilted his head to one side, and immediately winced. His neck was aching, like he'd been slammed headfirst into concrete. (That wouldn’t be the first time, either.) Soreness throbbed through his muscles and twinged in his joints. His mouth felt stuffed full of cotton, and his eyes were crusty and uncomfortable.

"You're awake!" said Lev. "Can you talk?"

"Uh?" Hinata managed. Even to him, his voice sounded rough and muddled.

"He's eloquent," observed the second voice, lazy and curling with amusement from where he sat, perched with a strange grace, on the back of an armchair. This boy was tall and thin too, with dark, messy hair and knowing honey-golden eyes. "Tell us your name, when you're ready. I'm Kuroo. The obnoxious one is Lev." Lev waved, and then straightened up so he wasn't quite so close to Hinata's face. "Akaashi is over there."

Akaashi, the last person who had spoken, nodded at Hinata. Hinata squinted at them - his eyes were still fuzzy with sleep, but he could pick out Akaashi's slender form standing by one of the windows, too bright for Hinata to see outside. They wore a baggy sweatshirt and a slim pair of jeans, although they were barefoot.

"And you'll meet Bokuto soon enough," Kuroo finished. "He's-"

"Hey, hey, hey!" called a sudden cheerful voice from just outside. The door banged open to reveal a boy about Kuroo’s age, with splotchy grey-black hair and brawny arms piled high with firewood. "Are they up yet?"

"Bokuto, have some tact," Kuroo complained. "The little one only just woke up. The tall one is still asleep."

"Jeez, what's taking him so long?" Bokuto dropped his burden on the hearth next to the fireplace and trotted over to Hinata. His sweatshirt matched Akaashi's - baggy and dark gray, with a logo so faded it was indecipherable - but the sleeves had been chopped off up to the fraying hems, revealing arms thick with muscle. His nose was hooked, like a beak, and his tanned face was warm and good-natured. His eyes were wide and golden, and crinkled with laugh lines at the corners. "Hi! Who are you!"

"Hinata," Hinata managed. "I'm Hinata Shouyou."

“You look really weak!” said Lev.

Hinata’s indignant squawk came out more like a croak. “I’m not weak!” he protested, struggling upright and kicking the weight of the scratchy wool blanket off his legs.

“You really are,” said a new voice - this one unpleasantly familiar.

Hinata scowled mightily and turned to glare down at Tsukishima, who was lying on his back on the other end of the sofa with his arms folded above his head and his sports glasses folded on his chest, looking for all the world like he was still asleep. “You’re as skinny as I am, Tsukishima!”

“Yes,” Tsukishima agreed  without opening his eyes, “but unlike you, I’m not the size of an ant.”

“You both look like scarecrows,” Akaashi interjected before Hinata could lunge at Tsukishima with murderous intent. "Where did you come from? How long have you been wandering for?"

"Uh-"

"They look like regular crows!" Bokuto added. "Do you have corvid genes?"

Hinata paused and stared at him in confusion. "What?"

"Corvid genes," Akaashi repeated. Their eyes slid down - past Hinata's bare shoulderblades, to something below them.

His bare shoulderblades.

And down to his-

_Shit._

Hinata yanked the scratchy wool blanket towards him, fumbling in blind panic to pull it around his shoulders. Bokuto was tugging off his sweatshirt - oh god, he was going to fight them, he was going to knock them out and cram them back into - Hinata swung his legs over the side of the sofa and threw out a hand to snatch Tsukishima and drag him along-

Bokuto turned around to face the wall - showed Hinata and Tsukishima his back - and Hinata went still as a stone.

Bokuto hadn’t been wearing a shirt under the sweatshirt, and his shoulders and back were wrapped with whipcord muscle. But bursting from his angel bones, the deeply tanned skin melted smoothly into mottled down, and then into black-and-tan feathers that sprang from a pair of huge, powerful wings.

Hinata glanced down at Tsukishima. They’d known each other long enough that Hinata could read the narrowness of his eyes - even though Bokuto’s wings were folded, it was obvious that his were much larger and bulkier than theirs.

On the other side of the room, Akaashi had shrugged off their own jacket, and they turned to show the two their own back. Their wings were slightly smaller than Bokuto’s, but still significantly heftier than Hinata’s and Tsukishima’s. On the rug, Lev was silent, which was surprising in and of itself, and under his hooded eyes, Kuroo’s gaze was piercing.

Hinata let out a shaky exhale as Bokuto turned back around, bare-chested and looking absurdly pleased with himself. “We’re like you!” he announced. “We’re bird kids!”

“I prefer ‘avian American’,” Tsukishima said.

Kuroo gracefully choked on his own spit, and the adrenaline began to fade from Hinata’s limbs. He knew what Tsukishima sounded like scared, and cracking jokes wasn’t it.

“How did we get here, then?” he asked, sitting back down on the lumpy sofa. Next to him, Tsukishima sat up, too, pulling his glasses on. “I remember the storm-”

“You fell from the sky!” said Lev. “Like the stork brought you!” He flapped his long arms a little to demonstrate.

Hinata squinted at him. “What?”

“You must’ve gotten caught flying in the storm,” Akaashi explained. “You’re lucky _anyone_ found you, let alone us. We’d taken shelter nearby.”

“Cause _they’re_ useless when it rains,” Kuroo put in, shooting a smirk at Akaashi.

Hinata tilted his head. “Why?”

Akaashi’s face twitched in irritation. “You’re just as skittish about it as I am, Kuroo.”

“Anyway!” Bokuto said. “Lev saw you two fall, since he was outside, and once the rain let up we came out and found you. And I flew you back here! Kuroo carried Tsukishima.”

Hinata’s eyes went circular. “You saved me!”

“Eh? I did?” Bokuto looked surprised, then pleased. “I did, didn’t I!”

Akaashi let out a tiny sigh.

“Are you two bird people, too?” Hinata turned his round stare on Kuroo and Lev. Both of them were just wearing t-shirts, and no wings showed out of their backs, which made it seem unlikely, but you never know.

Kuroo grinned. “Naw. Take a guess.” To illustrate, he sank into a crouch - and then sprang ten feet straight up, hooked his arm around one of the rafters, and swung up to perch on it.

“Flying squirrel!” Hinata said.

“Close!” Kuroo didn’t seem perturbed. He jumped down from the rafter, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, and a smirk spread across his face like a slime mold at Hinata’s boggled expression. “Genetically, I’m about 2% panther.”

 _“Oooooooh!”_ Hinata gasped.

“Lev… Well, we don’t really know about him.” Kuroo shrugged. “We grew up together, but he doesn’t share much with me. He’s stronger, but slower. More endurance, worse reflexes. He can’t climb for shit, but he can smell for miles, and he’s colorblind. Best we can figure is some kind of husky.”

“I’m a tiger!” Lev protested.

“Of course you are,” Kuroo agreed. “Anyway, he had two littermates his age, where we grew up. And there were - a few in the generation between us.”

Tsukishima stilled.

The shift was nearly imperceptible - so subtle that he would’ve doubted his own intuition, if he hadn’t also caught Bokuto’s eyes flicking downwards to the ground and Akaashi absently tugging at their fingers.

But he caught the trip in Kuroo’s voice, and the tightness at the very corners of his eyes, and he stored them away carefully for later examination.

“Speaking of that,” Kuroo went on. “Where _are_ you guys from? Or did the sky just spit you out?”

“We’re from-” Hinata began.

“We’ve been traveling,” Tsukishima interjected.

“For how long?” asked Akaashi.

“Not long,” Tsukishima answered. “A few weeks, maybe.”

“A while, then.”

“I don’t know how we even got this far,” Tsukishima said, “considering Hinata can barely fly.”

“Shut up!” Hinata scowled at him. “I’m _awesome_ at flying.”

“Sure, if we’re comparing you to a rock.”

Hinata lunged at him, and Tsukishima planted a hand on Hinata’s head to hold him off with his longer arms. “Don’t mind,” he told him.

“Whatever,” Hinata huffed. “Anyway-”

Three things happened at once.

One: Kuroo leaned forward, eyes gleaming with interest. Two: Tsukishima hurriedly opened his mouth to interrupt. Three: Hinata’s stomach made a noise like an ancient beast awakening from slumber.

Bokuto’s massive eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Kuroo. _Akaashi._ You guys didn’t give them _food_ yet?”

“They _just_ woke up-” Kuroo protested.

But Bokuto was already heading out of the room. “Hinata, come on!” he called over his shoulder. “We can talk more while we eat! You too, Tsukishima!”

Hinata kind of yelled a little in excitement and jumped up to follow - and then staggered to one side as the vertigo hit him. Tsukishima tsk’ed to himself and stood up more slowly, pulling on his glasses. Hinata regained his balance and glared at him. “Shut up, Tsukishima!”

“I didn’t say anything,” Tsukishima informed him, smugness dripping from his words.

 _“Whatever!”_ Hinata scooted out after Bokuto.

Even after Kuroo and Lev had followed the pair of them out towards the kitchen - Lev looking excited about food, Kuroo looking excited about witnessing the abject chaos of Lev and Hinata and Bokuto eating food - Tsukishima lingered, looking around the room. He took a moment to shake out his wings a little - although moving sooner would’ve ruined the effect of his apathy, they’d been squished underneath him as he slept and were uncomfortably stiff.

“You’re not hungry?” That was Akaashi, now standing next to Tsukishima. “You and Hinata really do look like a pair of twigs, you know.”

Tsukishima’s nose wrinkled slightly. “Hinata has a lot more growing to do than I do. Besides, I’ve got no desire to get in the middle of that.”

“This house is shaped like an E, so we don’t have to go into the kitchen to get to the rest of it,” Akaashi offered. “I can show you around, if you want.”

Tsukishima accepted and folded his wings back in, more grateful than he let on.

The first leg of the E held a dingy bathroom, a neat pantry, and a dusty storage room packed with a strange collection of items - rusty red tricycles, blue and purple floor lamps with no lightbulbs, a rolled-up sea-green shag rug with suspicious stains.

Tsukishima raised an eyebrow at Akaashi, who looked uncomfortable.

“From the air, it’s easy to see things left by the side of the road,” they explained. “And… Bokuto likes to hoard.”

"He carried this all back here himself?”

“Ah…” Akaashi tugged at their fingers. “I helped…”

"You can’t say no to him?” Tsukishima was needling them intentionally now - he couldn’t help it, it was his nature. He carefully hid his amusement under a facade of neutrality.

"You’re no different with Hinata,” Akaashi countered, and the amusement gave way to embarrassment.

“That’s different,” he said weakly. Was it obvious after only this long?

Akaashi smiled. “How so?”

“Hinata has some… Redeeming qualities.” _Endearing qualities,_ Tsukishima’s brain supplied. He instructed it to fuck off.

“Bokuto doesn’t?”

“None are evident yet.”

"If you like one, you’ll grow to like the other.” Akaashi shut the door of the storage room and motioned for Tsukishima to follow them. “As far as I can tell, they’re birds of a feather.”

It took Tsukishima a moment to catch the pun. When he made a small noise of disgust, Akaashi’s smile grew bigger.

Half of the second leg was a dormitory lined with bunk beds three high, one set on each wall. All were bare of covers except four: the adjoining top bunks on the far and right walls, the middle bunk on the near wall, and the bottom bunk on the left. The last showed raw wood where the headboard and footboard had been sawn off.

“For Lev,” Akaashi explained, gesturing to it. Tsukishima nodded in understanding. “You and Hinata can stay wherever you like - though I’d advise against sleeping below Bokuto or Kuroo.” They indicated the two occupied top bunks. “They like to climb into each other’s beds some nights, and there’s nothing quite as strange as waking up to a six-foot-one cat hybrid crawling around above your head.”

“They’re like kids,” Tsukishima mumbled. Akaashi smiled briefly.

“Kuroo’s better at hiding it.”

The other half of the leg was a kitchen, clean despite the evident age of the pot-bellied iron stove and the worn wooden table. They glanced in long enough to observe that Bokuto was happily introducing Hinata to a can of whipped cream, then ducked back out again.

“Where do you guys get your food?” Tsukishima asked as they moved on to the last leg.

“There are food banks in the city. Kuroo works, Bokuto and I scavenge. And…” A small smile flitted across Akaashi’s face. “We aren’t without friends.”

 _That_ caught Tsukishima’s attention, but Akaashi had already headed into the living room where they had woken up, neat although the decor more resembled the Island of Misfit Chairs than something out of Good Housekeeping. The rug was a wildly colorful relic of the 1970s, unfortunately not faded enough to hide the hideous zigzag pattern. In addition to the impressive variety of chairs, there was the long sofa where he’d woken up with Hinata, and a fireplace with a wide hearth and half the stones on the left side collapsed.

Tsukishima went over to the window and put his hands on the sill. Outside, the sun shone clear and bright down on a valley dark with evergreens. The E-shaped house was set into the side of a steep mountainside - across the valley, he could see the rugged peaks of mountains, dusted with snow even at midsummer. The wilderness was cast in dramatic contrasts, vast sweeps of land, and isolation.

“Bokuto and I,” Akaashi said - Tsukishima flinched at their voice; he hadn’t heard them come up next to him- “were genetically engineered in a facility called the School. We were raised together, in a group of owl hybrids.

“As far as we can tell, the School created us for experimentation. We grew up as test subjects for pain and inhumanity. And so, when I was ten, two of the oldest led us in an escape. Bokuto, and a girl named Shirofuku Yukie. When we were released into the woods for ‘hunting practice’.” Akaashi’s lips twisted wryly. “We weren’t the hunters. We had tracking collars on, and one of us stayed behind to disable the transmitter at the School. He had - unconventional methods of doing so.” In response to Tsukishima’s questioning look, Akaashi clarified. “He blew up the transmitter. And, ah, the entire transmissions room. And most of the School.

“Konoha didn’t make it.” Akaashi half-smiled. “I’ve always had a feeling that he was delighted to go out in a massive explosion of his own creation. But the rest of our nestmates are spread throughout the mountains, in groups of twos and threes, living like we do. We met Kuroo and Lev outside the School, after they’d escaped in the chaos of the explosion.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me about that part,” Tsukishima said to the window.

Akaashi inclined their head towards him. “And there’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

That was a fair point.

“If you’d like to explain where you came from,” Akaashi began gently, “I’d like to hear.”

Tsukishima considered.

“...It’s a long story,” he said at last.

Akaashi lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We’ve got no shortage of time.”

“Well… It started before we were born, I suppose.”


	2. story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Petco, bagels, flying lessons, and some unpacked baggage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> puck did some REALLY COOL ART for the last chapter! it can be found on [twitter](https://twitter.com/goodfellowes/status/817900476146581504) and [tumblr](http://goodfellowes.tumblr.com/post/155557546469/tsukki-for-vivasimplemindednesss-the-sharpest)
> 
> HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A BABY CROW. THEY'RE SO UGLY. I LOVE THEM
> 
> as always, thanks to [betsy](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) for betaing, and i can be found on [twitter](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis/status/819954155859091456) and [tumblr](http://vivasimplemindedness.tumblr.com/post/155819775723/the-sharpest-lives-chapter-2)

_The whitecoats had installed new cages in the cage room today, which meant that the flock of crows had spent a solid day in their old crates without food while they were shuffled around between different corridors. And sure, Tsukishima was hungry, but at least he still ate like a normal person when some whitecoat finally remembered to bring them food that evening. He wasn’t scarfing it down as though it’d been_ years _instead of about twelve hours._

_He cast a look of vague disgust at the cage next to him. “You’re going to give yourself a stomachache if you keep eating that quickly.”_

_Hinata paused for a moment, attempted to swallow down the mouthful of food puffing out his cheeks like a blowfish, and said, “Mrhg ghpgphf ghgfghjgfff.”_

_“Yeah… I have no idea what you’re saying.” Tsukishima turned away from him, staring around at the dim, dingy cage room. Even with brand-new cages, it was still laid out the same - Tsukishima and Hinata and the other three mutants their age along the left wall from the door, the middle ones like Nishinoya and Ennoshita along the back wall, and the oldest, Azumane and Daichi and Suga and Kiyoko, along the right. But now, the cages were crammed so tight that Yachi, at the end of the left row, could probably reach out and touch hands with Nishinoya, at the beginning of the back one. And they’d only be getting more cramped - Tsukishima had overheard enough from the whitecoats to know that he and Hinata and their row were_ the twelve-year-olds _now, and that they still had years worth of  growing to do._

_Absently, he picked at the long red lesion up the underside of his forearm. The electric burn was starting to scab over now, along with the raw marks on his wrists and ankles where the whitecoats had strapped him to the operation table._

_“What do you think this one was about?” he asked the cage next to him, where a boy with mousy brown hair and a faceful of freckles was examining his similar wounds._

_The boy looked up at his words._ Hmm? _he asked._ The electricity thing?

_“Yeah, I can never figure out what they’re trying to accomplish when they do this.”_

_From Tsukishima’s other side, Hinata piped up, “It’s cause they want us to hurt! Cause they’re evil!”_

_Tsukishima huffed a sigh. “That’s far too simple. Don’t you have food to occupy your mouth?”_

_“I finished it!” Hinata said. “But if you have extra-”_

_“I don’t.”_

Maybe they’re trying to trigger something, _the mousy-haired boy suggested._ Like - a berserker mode!

_Tsukishima already regretted asking his question. “Yamaguchi, why in heaven would we even have a berserker mode?”_

Sorry, Tsukki! _Yamaguchi answered, not sounding sorry at all._

_Tsukishima sighed and returned to picking at his scabbed arm. He was surrounded by idiots._

* * *

The day after their arrival, Tsukishima woke up to a bunkroom solely occupied by Hinata’s orange head sticking out of a mountain of scratchy woolen blankets. He wandered into the kitchen, dug a stale bagel out of a cabinet, and brought it into the living room, where the rest of the group was already eating breakfast. Bokuto and Akaashi were crouched on the armchairs like a pair of menacing vultures, Lev was curled up on the awful rug, and Kuroo was draped across the back of the sofa. The actual seat section of the couch was unoccupied.

Tsukishima sat down in the rocking chair and started nibbling on his bagel. “Does anyone in this house sit normally?”

“Good morning to you too,” Kuroo said. “Where’s Hinata?”

“Still asleep. Enjoy it while you can-”

“Mornin’, shorty!” Bokuto said to the doorway. Tsukishima went still, then turned to see Hinata, in the rumpled Target clothes he’d been wearing for weeks, standing behind him with bedhead that would put a chrysanthemum to shame.

“Good morning, Bokuto-san!” Hinata sidled through the doorway, took a running jump, landed on the ugly 70’s rug, and skidded across it to thump into Lev’s back. Lev yelped with surprise and rolled over to headbutt Hinata in the shoulder. Hinata retaliated by yanking him into a headlock. While they tussled, Kuroo shoved the rest of his bagel in his mouth and leapt off the back of the sofa to stride towards the door.

“Well, have a good day, kids,” he tossed over his shoulder. “I have to go to work. This food doesn’t come out of nowhere, you know.”

Hinata stopped wrestling with Lev to sit up and tilt his head at Kuroo. “Where do you work, Kuroo-san?”

“I traffic hard drugs,” Kuroo answered, without missing a beat. In the background, Bokuto started cackling.

_“Ooooooh!”_

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool-”

“Right,” said Tsukishima. “Where do you _actually_ work?”

“Uh, I’m a mafia hitman?”

“We’re in the middle of the _mountains.”_

“I-”

“He works at Petco,” Akaashi said.

For a moment, there was silence. Akaashi turned their head away, but the puff of their cheeks betrayed their smile. Bokuto’s laughter had gone wheezy. On the rug, Lev was snickering.

“Kuroo-san,” Hinata said, “that’s kind of fucked up.”

Kuroo shoved his face into his hands and mumbled something baleful at the floor.

“Have you ever sold a pet kitten?” Tsukishima asked him, the corners of his mouth curving up in delight at Kuroo’s discomfort. “Did you ever wonder if you were accepting cash for a relative? Some distant cousin who never deserved-”

“I’ll sell _you,”_ Kuroo groaned.

“Well!” said Bokuto. “While Kuroo is off selling his cousins-”

_“They’re not-”_

“-me and Akaashi are going hunting! And Lev, but he stays on the ground. You two can come along, if you want!”

“Yes!” Hinata said  - at the same time that Tsukishima asked,

“What exactly do you mean by hunting?”

Bokuto grinned, all teeth. “Want to come see?”

* * *

_Tsukishima had grown taller, although for all the time he spent hunched over in his cage, nobody would notice it unless they glanced down at the place where his ankles always stuck out of the pants of his plasticky white scrubs. As far as he could tell from watching the whitecoats lead the other crow hybrids in and out of the cage room - they were all too big to be carried now, even Nishinoya - he was the tallest, taller even than Azumane, the stocky older boy whose hair had grown down to his shoulders._

_It was Azumane they brought back now - white sack pulled over his head, white ziptie binding his wrists around his back, like they always did when they transported any of them anywhere. The three whitecoats with him shut the door of the cage room behind them. One, with a narrow, ferrety face, hurriedly unlocked Azumane’s cage, while the others tugged off the sack on his head and snipped the tie._

Come on, come on, _hissed the whitecoat with the ferret-face._

Hold your fire, _retorted another, with an orange-red beard. Nonetheless, the three of them didn’t hesitate in pushing Azumane’s unresisting body into his cage and slamming the bars shut behind him._

_Once he was inside, blinking at the floor with his head low, the whitecoats lingered for a bit, shooting distasteful looks at the boy they’d just finished with._

God. Even the seventeen-year-olds are turning out like this, _muttered ferret-face._ And these ones are the success stories?

 _The one with the red beard clapped him on the back._ Hey, just be glad we aren’t seeing the failures, eh? Besides, I hear they’re cooking something special up, more than what we’ve been doing so far. Something that they think they almost got to work at one of the other facilities a few years ago.

To work? _grumbled ferret-face, clearly unconvinced._ On whom, exactly?

_But the three whitecoats filed out together before they could continue bickering and clicked out the lights, leaving the cage room in darkness._

_Next to Tsukishima, Hinata pressed himself to the front of his cage. “Asahi-san! Are you okay?”_

Ah? Oh, I’m fine, Hinata, _Azumane answered from across the room. Next to him, Tsukishima could see the glint of other eyes in the dim light - Sugawara next to Azumane, and Daichi on Suga’s other side. Azumane’s teeth flashed white with a halfhearted smile._ They’re always a little harder on me, I think.

It’s cause they’re scared of you, big guy, _answered Daichi._ You’re stronger than most of them, these days.

You could break any of those nerdy whitecoats in half, Asahi-san! _Nishinoya spoke up, and enthusiastic agreement rose up from around the room._

I do wonder what he meant by ‘special’, _Kiyoko mused, on Azumane’s other side. Her wings were a dark patch of sooty shadow behind her - Kiyoko wasn’t particularly tall, but her wings were the biggest of anyone in the flock_

Whatever it is, we can take it, _Daichi replied,  chest puffed with confidence._ You heard what they said. We’re getting too strong for them.

_That night was the first night they were put to the Erasers._

* * *

Hunting, apparently, did not entail much actual hunting.

“Heads up, Tsukishima!”

The holler was growing rapidly closer - Tsukishima beat his wings a few times and rose upwards just in time for Bokuto and Hinata to shoot by underneath him, neck and neck. He watched them tear off into the distance - and then pull their paths upwards into a wide arc. Hinata had his arms out in front of him like Superman - idiot, that didn’t actually-

“That doesn’t actually make him faster, you know,” said a quiet voice below him.

Tsukishima cut off his curse and managed to restrain the surprised flutter of his wings. About ten feet below him, Akaashi had glided up without a sound.

“Sorry,” Akaashi told him. Their wings were extended wide, revealing the mottled black-and-white pattern of their feathers. “Our breed was built for silence.”

“Bokuto doesn’t do that,” Tsukishima countered. Below Akaashi, the long valley was carpeted in deep green, and the dark patch of their combined shadow skimmed over the treetops. To either side, the mountains rose up around them like marbled white-grey watchtowers.

“He could, if he ever stopped talking.”

Ahead of them, Bokuto and Hinata had doubled around and were tearing back towards Akaashi and Tsukishima. As they raced closer, Hinata edged out in front - and then pulled ahead of Bokuto, whipping past Tsukishima a full second before Bokuto did.

“Whoa!” Bokuto was laughing as he and Hinata circled around to pull up to Tsukishima and Akaashi. “You’re a zippy one!”

“I’m fast!” Hinata echoed, seeming delighted. He beat his wings a few times and flew up directly above Tsukishima. At the bottom of what had become a stack of bird kids, Bokuto dipped into a course several feet below Akaashi.

Whatever. Bokuto wouldn’t stay impressed for long - the thing about Hinata and flying was that, at some point, what went up had to come down, and-

“Bokuto,” Akaashi spoke up, “we’re almost there.”

“Huh?” Bokuto glanced up to Akaashi, then down to the ground. “Oh, you’re right!” Ahead of them, just before the end of the notch, the evergreen carpet parted, and the narrow furrow of the brook widened into something broad and shining.

Lev was waiting for them on the shore of the lake as they circled down from the sky. Bokuto landed in a run along the rocky shore, steps digging a trail of furrows into the ground as he slowed himself. Akaashi landed a little lighter, tilting their wings back to slow their descent. Tsukishima attempted to follow suit, but leaned back too far, and barely managed to touch down without his legs tangling and tripping under him.

He averted his eyes from Hinata’s landing, already knowing what was coming. Unfortunately, he couldn’t block out the sound of Bokuto’s and Akaashi’s voices rising in concern, or the crunch of sand and gravel as Hinata slammed ass-first into the lakeshore and skidded halfway down the beach on the seat of his Target cargo shorts.

“Hinata, are you okay?” That was Akaashi.

“I’m fine!” Hinata hopped up from the ground, brushing off his pants. “I - I never learned how to land any other way!”

He was so embarrassing.

As Hinata recovered from his awkward landing, Lev loped up. He held up something small and furry. Tsukishima peered at the dead animal in mild interest. “I got a jackrabbit!”

“Whoa!” Hinata gasped. “How!”

Lev beamed. “I caught its scent as I was running, and I chased it down, and broke its neck!”

“Nice!” Bokuto glanced at the animal appreciatively. “That’s dinner tonight. But I can’t let you beat the creatures of the sky when it comes to hunting!”

As Tsukishima watched, Bokuto leapt into the air again, and circled low over the water. After a few moments, he went into a dive - skimmed along the rippling surface of the lake - and swooped back up again with something clutched in his hands, wriggling frantically. A rainbow trout.

So that was the _hunting_ part.

Bokuto touched back down on the lakeshore, where Akaashi was already unpacking something from the pockets of their windbreaker. “Tsukishima, can you help me with this?” they asked, holding out the crumpled burlap. A sack.

Tsukishima took hold of two corners of the sack so Bokuto could drop the fish in, although he had some questions. “You’re owls, right?” he asked Bokuto as the trout flopped out its last breaths. “Aren’t you supposed to eat mice or something?”

Bokuto paused to cock an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t crows supposed to eat garbage?”

Oh.

“Now come on! I can’t catch all our fish alone.” He waved a hand at Lev. “You - go back into the forest. Put that nose of yours to work.”

“We’re all hunting!” said Hinata, who seemed absolutely delighted about it.

“Yeah! We’ll have fish for the week.” Bokuto grinned. “Kuroo likes to pretend, but we’re the ones who _really_ bring home the food around here.”

“Kuroo buys us bagels,” Akaashi pointed out.

“Oh, that’s true,” Bokuto allowed. “I suppose he has some uses.”

* * *

_Something fierce always started thrumming in Tsukishima’s chest when the whitecoats frog-marched the flock into the long, thin room where they kept the collars._

_It was always dark in this room, lit only by blacklights that glowed eerily off Suga’s hair and Tsukishima’s skin. But Tsukishima could see the green lights beeping on the thick metal collars, where they were plugged into the charging stations along the sides of the room. As his eyes adjusted, a whitecoat fitted the collar labeled 11 around his neck and clicked it shut. The zipties were snipped off his wrists, and he could distinguish the forms of the rest of the flock milling around the room. The small lights of the collars - red, now that they were unplugged - glowed around him like a small flock of fireflies._

_Fear kicked in when he stepped into the collar room, definitely. Sharp spikes of adrenaline in rapid rhythm. But there was also something more exhilarating. Something that tasted like the cold night air in his mouth, sounded like the murmurs and heartbeats of all the small living things in the trees and the loam, felt like the first time the whitecoats had opened the doors of the collar room to let the wind into Tsukishima’s feathers._

_Mostly fear, though._

_The whitecoats never bothered telling them the drills anymore - Tsukishima knew the rules of the collars well enough at this point. Go further than two kilometers from the collar room, and the collar blows up and you die. Try to take it off, and the collar blows up and you die. Get more than five meters off the ground, and the collar blows up and you die._

_The doors of the collar room hissed open, revealing the night-blanketed forest. Whitecoat hands roughly hustled Tsukishima and the flock along, until they were standing in a small huddle on the gravel just outside. Tsukishima tipped his head back, drinking in the night air - it wasn’t infrequent that the whitecoats ran this drill, but he still hadn’t quite gotten used to the taste of this particular chemical exhilaration boiling in his chest._

_And now, there was only the most base of rules:_

_Survive._

_The doors hissed shut behind them._

_Through the trees, Tsukishima’s ears caught the first howl._

* * *

“Tsukishima, you’re getting fatter!” was the first thing Lev said to Tsukishima, on his fifteenth morning at the E-shaped house. (Sixteenth? He had started to lose track of the days, which had been unnervingly easy to do.)

Tsukishima blinked. “What?”

“Look!” Lev pattered over to Tsukishima, who was shirtless due to the general inconvenience of fitting his wings through the slits in the back of a t-shirt first thing in the morning, and pointed at his stomach. “You’re still skinny, but you looked like a sack of bones when you first got here!”

“It’s only been two weeks,” Tsukishima pointed out, snippier than usual. It was vaguely irritating, having someone taller than him around. Especially when that person was as noisy as Lev.

“Me, too!” Hinata spoke up, from where he was sitting on the kitchen table and scarfing down his bagel. He pulled up his t-shirt - one that Kuroo had brought him from the little town in the valley over, not the now-ragged shirt that he’d stolen from Target more than a month ago - and poked at his gut. Sure enough, there was a layer of softness where before his skin had been gaunt.

“It must be the refreshing mountain air,” Tsukishima deadpanned.

“Definitely not!” said Bokuto. “It’s cause you’ve been eating more.”

“Yeah, Bokuto’s right,” Kuroo chimed in, shooting a tomcat smirk at Tsukishima from where he was hovering near the warmth of the potbellied stove. “It’s not just the air.”

Tsukishima gave him a sour look back.

“I feel stronger!” Hinata agreed. “Like I could fly all the way to China!”

Bokuto tapped his finger against his lips. “Hmm…”

Tsukishima stiffened - that sounded worrisomely like Bokuto having an idea. He swiftly decided not to ask, instead making his way over to the cabinet where they kept the bagels.

Unfortunately, Lev wasn’t so wise. “What is it, Bokuto-san?”

“Well, Akaashi isn’t awake yet, but - if you’re feeling strong enough - I could start teaching you guys how to fly! Like, _really_ fly.”

 **“AAAAAAAAA,”** said Hinata.

“Then it’s settled! To the roof!” Bokuto raised a fist in the air and marched off towards the ladder up to the skylight.

Hinata followed, hanging off Bokuto’s heels like an adoring puppy. Or maybe a wrinkly baby crow. One of the really ugly ones, with dull, tattery gray feathers like the ones Tsukishima and Hinata had had until they molted into their current glossy black.

Tsukishima was so very glad he had been there for Hinata’s awkward phase. The only downside was that Hinata had also been there for his - but Tsukishima’s awkward phase had only been from roughly age eleven to thirteen, whereas Hinata’s had lasted fifteen years and counting and Tsukishima had borne wonderfully blackmail-worthy witness to every last minute of it.

Before Tsukishima followed them, he paused to shoot a glance at Lev. “You aren’t coming to watch?”

Lev, who already was halfway over to the pantry, paused and tipped his head like a curious puppy. “Tsukishima-kun, why would I know anything about flying?”

That was fair, and Tsukishima was glad to leave him behind as he retrieved a t-shirt from the bunkroom and then followed Bokuto and Hinata up the ladder.

The roof was shingled with battered old tiles, half of them broken in two, the other half worn slippery-smooth. Tsukishima picked his way down the incline as Bokuto attempted to force shut the rusty hinges of the skylight. Behind him, Kuroo bounded confidently across the length of the roof to settle down cross-legged against the chimney.

“I have a question for you,” Tsukishima said over his shoulder.

“Sure,” Kuroo said.

“Why are you here?”

“To help you learn?”

“You don’t even have wings,” Tsukishima pointed out. “I could push you off this roof right now. You’d go down like a rock.”

Kuroo grinned at him. “I’d only be a little worse off than you, the way you fly.”

Tsukishima scowled and turned back to face out over the valley.

The E-shaped house was set into the side of the mountain, steep enough that when Tsukishima looked straight out, his vision skimmed over the tips of the pine trees clinging to the slope just below them. The slope fell away sharply down to the thick, dark pines of the valley.

“Nice weather we’re having,” said Kuroo.

“It certainly is weather.”

“You seem like a rain person.”

“I really wouldn’t know. I grew up in a testing facility."

"Is that where you learned how to fly like a scared peacock?"

“I learned to fly in a _wind tunnel._ And I’m still as strong in the air as anyone."

"You're doing a lot of flapping you don't need to," Kuroo told him. "You should learn things like gliding, taking advantage of air currents."

"Haven't you noticed how wide my wingspan is?" Tsukishima tossed back. "I don't need lessons in things like that."

"There's more to flight than just your size," Kuroo insisted. "Hinata can fly just as well as you, can't he? And he's still trying to get better."

Tsukishima was silent.

“It’s inefficient,” Kuroo added. “You’re wasting a lot of energy.”

Tsukishima frowned out over the valley. “And how would you know?”

He refused to look at Kuroo, but Tsukishima could still hear the grin in his voice. “I know lots of things.”

Tsukishima Kei considered himself somewhat a connoisseur of hostility; loathing was an art that he had refined to a science, both inciting it and dispensing it. But nobody in his life had ever irritated him as much and as quickly as this lanky feline asshole.

In some perverse way, it was impressive.

Bokuto finally jammed the skylight all the way shut and stood up. "Tsukishima, get over here!"

"I'm already where I need to be," Tsukishima pointed out. "You're the one who's fighting with an inanimate obj-"

“Right, then, let’s get started!” Bokuto interrupted, and pushed Tsukishima off the roof.

Tsukishima did not screech. He might have made a small noise in the back of his throat as the tops of the trees rushed up to meet him. There might have been several snickers from the direction of the chimney. Tsukishima did not _screech._

He landed tailbone-first with a thump between the trees, but the slippery carpet of pine needles cushioned his fall - he wouldn’t have worse than a bruise. His dignity wasn't so lucky.

Next to him, Bokuto landed hard in a crouch and offered him a hand up. “Tsukishima! You have _wings,_ don’t you?”

Tsukishima ignored the hand to glare up at Bokuto. "You pushed me off the _roof."_

“It was good for you!” Bokuto said, seemingly unconcerned.

On the roof above, Kuroo’s messy head poked over the gutter. He grinned down at Tsukishima, and mouthed three words: _Like a rock._

Tsukishima picked himself up from the ground and brushed the prickly pine needles off his backside with a few curt swipes. He jerked his wings out, and took three short strokes up to the roof. Kuroo stepped back to let him land, smirk lurking around the corners of his mouth. Bokuto fluttered up behind him.

“Let’s do that again,” Tsukishima snapped.

And he pretended that he didn’t notice, out of the corners of his eyes, when Bokuto shot Kuroo a thumbs up.

Unfortunately, there was yet another irritating person on the roof with them. “Tsukishima, don’t be greedy!” Hinata piped up. “I wanna go next!”

_“I’m not being-”_

“Alright, here we go!” said Bokuto, and shoved Hinata off the edge.

Hinata’s squawk of delight sunk down for a moment before he reappeared over the lip of the roof, rising and falling with the beat of his wings. “Okay, let’s go!”

Bokuto leapt into the air too - and this time, Tsukishima didn’t hesitate to follow.

* * *

_The Eraser’s breath was hot and rancid at Tsukishima’s bare feet._

_It had him backed up a tree, sticky patches of sap on his hands where he gripped its branches. The thing was close enough that he could pick out its individual yellow teeth, the thick saliva dripping from its slavering canines, the wicked yellow bloodlust in its terrifyingly human eyes._

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

_Erasers were ugly, patchwork creatures, like they’d been stitched together from the offal and scraps of the rest of creation. Their snouts were long and lupine, their bodies grotesque with muscle. As though they’d been frozen halfway between human and monster._

Come down, little birdie, _the Eraser singsonged, grinning its misshapen grin. A chuckle scraped out of its throat like a raw file across vocal chords._ You can’t stay up there for much longer, you know…

_Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-_

_Tsukishima curled his lip down at the creature. “Maybe when you brush your teeth.”_

_BEEEEEEEE-_

_The Eraser laughed again, and with a flash of wings, Tsukishima leapt from the tree. He hit the ground hard, snapping his wings shut against his back so that he could dart off into the forest._

_Trees flashed around him as his feet pounded against the forest floor. Tsukishima was fast - not as fast as Hinata, but when he lowered his head and broke into a dead sprint he could get close. But when he risked a glance over his shoulder, the Eraser had dropped to all fours and was gaining on him in great clawed bounds._

_Tsukishima’s arm shot out and caught hold of a slender birch, glowing ghostly silver in a beam of moonlight that stabbed down through the foliage. He swung around the trunk and let go halfway through the arc - sharply skewing his path ninety degrees. Behind him, there was a sharp yelp and the sudden scrabble of claws skidding across leaf cover - but it wouldn’t buy him much time._

_Shit._

_Tsukishima would have to fight._

_He could catch his breath first, though. Tsukishima slowed to a jog, the run burning in his sides and thighs. As the trees widened into a small clearing, he caught hold of the lowest overhanging branch he passed, and pushed off from the ground with the help of a few flaps up to the perch. He was low enough for the Eraser to reach him, if it jumped - but any higher and his collar would start beeping again._

_He leaned against the trunk of the tree and opened his mouth wide to suck in gulps of air, soothing the burn pounding in his wrists and throat._

_A short howl screeched up into the air - so close that Tsukishima’s shoulders prickled at the roots of his wings. Half a breath later, the Eraser burst from the woods, sprinting on all fours. It bounded up to Tsukishima’s tree - stood up on two legs to gouge into the bark with cruel claws._

I’m gonna claw your air-sacs open, _it growled,_ see how far you can run then-

_Tsukishima shifted away from the trunk of the tree - coiled his muscles to spring down onto the Eraser’s rough-pelted back-_

_Crack._

_The Eraser’s pitiless yellow eyes bulged out, suddenly wide with shock. And then it toppled forward, landing facedown on the loam._

_Behind it, Daichi stood with a huge branch still raised, chest heaving with the effort. He dropped the branch to the ground, raised his fierce stare to the boy frozen on the limb above him._ Tsukishima. Come down.

_Tsukishima dropped down from the tree, landing in a crouch and reaching one hand down to steady himself. He stood up, brushed off his hands. “Thanks-”_

_But Daichi wasn’t listening. He stepped close to Tsukishima - reached up towards him._ Here - bend down a little.

_Tsukishima obeyed. “What’s going on?”_

_A small, shiny object flashed in Daichi’s hand. He reached up - and on the collar around Tsukishima’s neck, something clicked. Like metal on metal._

_Every hair on Tsukishima’s body stood up. “What are you-”_

Shh, _Daichi hissed._ Don’t move too much-

_“Daichi-”_

Tsukishima, _Daichi interrupted. His voice was low and fast._ Once you’re out of here, go straight east. Find clothing that will cover your wings, and find food.

_Tsukishima blinked. “You’re - we’re escaping.”_

Don’t talk, _Daichi chided him. At Tsukishima’s neck, the little metal thing twisted at his collar. He swallowed._

_Something clicked at his throat._

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

_Daichi cursed, and his fingers started moving faster._ That’s one of the three - here, turn a little-

_“You’ll have to show me how to get yours, when you’re done with mine-”_

I will, once yours is off.

_Beep-beep-beep-beep-_

_And then - another click._

_Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-_

Find the others, if you can, _Daichi went on._ But don’t stick around. And once you’re gone, never, ever come back here. Just survive.

_“But - won’t you-”_

_One last click._

_Daichi smiled up at him._

They’ll never count on us working together.

_BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-_

_Daichi’s palm struck Tsukishima hard in the sternum-_

_Tsukishima staggered back across the clearing-_

_Daichi’s mouth opened in a scream-_

Go-

_Daichi’s body curled forward - he collapsed onto his knees - his wings curved around him, protecting the broken pieces of the collar that he hugged to his chest-_

_The boom of the explosion split Tsukishima’s eardrums in half._

_A wall of heat slammed into his front, and he barely managed to snap his wings open in time to catch the rising plume of hot air. With a few hard flaps, he was meters above the treetops, higher than he’d ever flown before._

_Below him, the billowing fireball seared the dark forest glowing red._

_Tsukishima soared higher above the trees, flapping frantically. Across the black forest, similar fireballs burst up with a series of booms - Tsukishima counted one, two - three - four-_

_And one body, rising from the westernmost explosion. Small, moving quickly. Hinata. Rising upwards with quick, irregular strokes._

_Tsukishima soared through the sky to meet him partway. “Let’s go,” he hissed to Hinata, flapping slowly to keep himself aloft. “Daichi said to head east.”_

_Hinata stared at him, face dark as a nightmare in the moonlight._

_“GO,” Tsukishima repeated. He swatted Hinata across the face._

_Hinata spun in the air, and shot off eastward. Tsukishima twisted and followed._

* * *

The thick, soft clouds were pretty, objectively - they wound in tufts around the peaks, clung to the steep slopes, and settled down in the passes like wispy white housecats.

When Tsukishima burst up and out of one of them, though, he mostly just felt wet. He glided through the air slowly, catching what he could of the clear sunlight - but the air was thin and crisp at this altitude, and it took a few shakes of his wings to dry them off.

By his side, Akaashi’s feathers were puffed up, and their face was strained. Tsukishima raised an eyebrow at them. “Is something wrong?”

“Well-” Akaashi gave their wings a few vigorous flaps. “We have owl wings, see… So, our feathers aren’t waterproof. They just soak it up.”

“So, when it rains…”

Akaashi’s nose scrunched up. “Don’t ask. Oh - I’ve noticed you turn kind of strangely, yeah? Here, tip your wings a little - um, left - yeah, that’s it-”

 _“Tsukishima!”_ came a voice, faint on the wind.

Halfway through the arc of his turn, Tsukishima glanced up on reflex - to where Bokuto appeared to be hanging off of a mountaintop. He waved down at the other two bird kids below him and called, _“Tsukki, come on up!”_

“Ah, you’d better go,” Akaashi told him, and circled away before Tsukishima could even make a perfunctory complaint.

The wind grew sharper as he flew higher, and it was buffeting his wings by the time he landed on the little ledge next to Bokuto. His sneakers crunched into the snow as he landed. “Yes?”

“I’m gonna teach you how to ride the winds.” Bokuto’s alarming eyebrows curved downwards in a smirk. Around the peak of the mountain, the wind keened.

“What - _here?”_

Bokuto grinned at him and moved half a step forward. Tsukishima skittered back a few steps through the snow. _“Do not push me off-”_

“Then quit fucking around!” The wind was whipping at Bokuto’s T-shirt and freezing the tips of his ears red, though his stiff-gelled hair didn’t move at all. “C’mon, I’ll show you what to do.”

Tsukishima hesitated - risked a glance down the vertical slope of the mountain at the distant green of the valley-

And then, his glossy black wings crept out from behind his back.

Bokuto hooted in excitement and hurled himself from the precipice just as a massive gust of wind slammed into them. Tsukishima jumped before he could think once about it-

And then the wind was ripping at his wings - gnawing at his angel-bones and snapping at his feathers-

Through the roar of adrenaline in his ears, Tsukishima could hear Bokuto’s voice shouting, _“Tsukishima, stay upright - let it catch you-”_

With a great wrench of his wings, Tsukishima tilted his direction - wriggled over off his back -

And then, suddenly, the ferocious force of the wind was underneath his wings - and Tsukishima shot forward like a bullet.

The winds raced along under him, and Bokuto’s great booming laugh chased after him. When Tsukishima glanced down, a tiny orange-haired yell and a slim dark-haired silence were soaring up to meet his path. The E-shaped house hung off the side of a snowcapped mountain that looked only slightly more huge than Tsukishima felt. On the rooftop, a tiny head of dark, messy hair and a taller one of silver were tilted upwards. In his veins, chemical exhilaration bubbled up and flooded out to the tips of his fingers and the prickle of his shoulders.

When Tsukishima looked up - once the great gust of wind had died down, and his course had slowed to a glide, like the ripples of a breaker washing up against the sand - he could see the stratosphere.

* * *

_Hinata’s eyes were red and puffy again this morning._

_It wasn’t even about Asahi this time. Tsukishima would understand if it were that. Every time he’d tried to sleep over the past three weeks, Daichi’s face contorting in a scream played itself out on the backs of his eyelids like some twisted feature film. No, this time - judging by the resentful look Hinata shot him when he came back from taking a morning piss in the woods - it was about the others._

_Tsukishima closed the door of the cabin behind him, wrinkling his nose at the musty smell. The place had clearly been abandoned for a while - the only food in the cabinets had expired more than a decade ago, and although there was a small bedroom off the main room, it was already occupied by a small family of raccoons that had taken up residence in the branches of a rather large pine tree that had crashed through the roof in some bygone storm. “There’s no need to look at me like that.”_

_Hinata didn’t say anything, which was surprising enough in itself._

_Tsukishima crossed the wooden floorboards and sat down on the moth-chewed sofa, where Hinata was curled up. “I’m hungry, do you want to eat?”_

_“We should go back for them.” Hinata’s voice was wet, cracked. “If we got out, then Kageyama and Yamaguchi and Yachi must’ve too.”_

_“Daichi said not to stick around-”_

_“And he also said to work together!” Hinata turned his sharp stare on Tsukishima. “We’re no use to them in the middle of the mountains somewhere!”_

_“And we’re even less use to them in a cage.” Tsukishima stared right back down at him. “What makes you think we have any chance of getting back into the School?”_

_“How are we supposed to know that we don’t when we just keep flying further away!”_

_“You’re far too optimistic-”_

_“You’re way too negative!”_

_Silence._

_“At least we have regular clothing now,” Tsukishima muttered, reluctantly. “And food.”_

_Hinata heaved a great sigh, but inclined his head in agreement. “And the people at Target didn’t even notice until we were already in the air.”_

_“Daichi,” Tsukishima managed to force out, “told me to go east. So - once we’re through these mountains… we can find somewhere to stop moving. And then, maybe… Once we’re stronger-”_

_He cut himself off, going rigid as Hinata scooted closer to burrow his curly orange head into Tsukishima’s side._

_He was warm against Tsukishima’s shoulder. His hands wound their way around Tsukishima’s arm, wrapping it tight in his grip. Tsukishima was stiff with discomfort._

_“Thank you,” came Hinata’s muffled voice._

_“I really wasn’t - I think I liked proximity to you better when there were a set of bars between us-”_

_Hinata released him, thankfully, and hopped up off the sofa where they’d slept. “Well, wherever we go, we go together. Anyway, let’s eat breakfast! I’m hungry.”_

_“Alright,” said Tsukishima, choosing not to point out that he’d suggested breakfast already a few minutes ago. He was too tired to bicker with Hinata, rewarding though it always was. “But let’s get going quickly. When I went outside, it looked like, later, it’s going to storm.”_

* * *

For a moment after Tsukishima finished the story, there was silence.

Outside, sunset was washing the snowcaps and the windowpanes rosy red and pale gold. Inside, the inhabitants of the E-shaped house - which, he supposed, included him now - were scattered around the living room. Tsukishima was settled in one of the overstuffed armchairs, Hinata perched on the wide arm next to him. Lev had flopped down on the rug, and Kuroo had curled up into Bokuto’s side on the lumpy sofa. Akaashi, in the rocking chair, was slowly pushing it back and forth with their foot.

Tsukishima shifted a little, discomfited by the quiet. “And - well, you know the rest. But…”

“You’re suspicious,” Kuroo supplied.

Tsukishima nodded. “Hinata and I talked about this, and your stories corroborate it. If there had been other breakouts, they should’ve been on high alert. We think they let us go too easily.”

“Ours wasn’t _that_ easy,” Kuroo muttered.

“So we’re going to go back!” Hinata finished.

“We’re going to go back when we’re _older and stronger,”_ Tsukishima corrected him. “We barely made it out - there’s no way we could get back in-”

“And no way we can _know_ that-”

“We don’t even know where the School _is,”_ Tsukishima cut him off. He didn’t bother to conceal his exasperation. They’d been having the same tired argument for a month and a half now, but Hinata’s glare down from his perch was just as fiery as ever.

“So, you don’t remember its location?” Kuroo asked.

Tsukishima shook his head. “We know that it’s westward, but we didn’t exactly come here as the crow flies - hey, I didn’t _mean_ to do that.” He frowned at Akaashi, who was smiling to themself at the pun.

“You could try! Maybe Fate will guide you,” Bokuto declared grandly.

“Alright,” said Akaashi. “Or maybe they can use their homing sense. We have those too, remember?”

“Like homing pigeons!” Hinata exclaimed.

“I always knew you were part pigeon,” Tsukishima told him. Hinata rolled his eyes loudly.

“But yes, we all have inherent senses of direction,” Bokuto confirmed.

“I just said that,” Akaashi mumbled.

“AS I WAS SAYING,” Bokuto continued. “Like - face north.”

Without hesitation, Hinata turned his head to face the northern wall of the cabin - and his eyes widened with surprise. “Oh!”

“Right!” Bokuto looked pleased with himself. “Sometimes our bird brains just tell us where we need to go.”

“You found your way here, didn’t you?” Kuroo put in.

“Well, I really doubt that was divine destiny,” Tsukishima mumbled. “At any rate, we’re here now, and I certainly don’t feel any homing sense drawing me back to the School. And even if we _do_ go back, we’ll have to fight our way-”

“We _are_ going back,” Hinata insisted. “We don’t know what happened to the rest of our flock. And I think we _can_ get back in. The whitecoats will never count on us working together.”

Something in Kuroo’s face was unreadable. “You really want to do that?”

Hinata nodded, face set with determination.

“Tsukishima?” Kuroo prompted.

“I-” Tsukishima shifted, tucking one leg underneath himself. “Well - it’s - there’s no way Hinata would make it all the way back without someone intelligent around.”

The corners of Kuroo’s mouth twitched. “Alright.”

Tsukishima turned to Bokuto, who was studying the pair of them closely.

“Okay,” he said finally.

“Okay… what?” Tsukishima prompted.

“What do you mean, _okay what?”_ Bokuto jumped up and headed towards the door. “Akaashi, let’s get packing!”

“You’re - you’re coming _with_ us?” Hinata squawked.

Bokuto turned and grinned over his shoulder. “Didn’t Tsukishima say you aren’t strong enough to do it alone?”

_“But-”_

“We’ll leave tomorrow!”

_“Tomorrow?”_

Akaashi stood up from their chair and padded after Bokuto. “You two are strong enough to fly now, yes?”

“Of course they are!” Bokuto assured them. “There’s no point hanging around! C’mon, we can lend you guys packs and stuff.”

 _“We’re going straight to the School?”_ Hinata gasped.

“Nope!” said Bokuto. “We’ll get there eventually, but I have no idea where it is. So first…” Excitement gleamed in his golden eyes. “We have to go visit a friend.”


	3. oracle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old friends, new missions, and the remix to Ignition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR NO UPDATE LAST WEEK I WAS HELLA SICK AND ALSO HAD TO MOVE. here is the light of my life to make up for it. as always, thanks to [betsy](http://www.twitter.com/owlinaminor) for betaing, and hmu on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/dickaeopolis)/[tumblr](http://vivasimplemindedness.tumblr.com)

Tsukishima dozed fitfully that night, drifting in and out of wakefulness as the hours ticked by. When the darkness began to lighten through the skylight, he pushed his scratchy wool blankets off and crawled out of his bunk, toes curling against the chill of the floorboards.

Lev was snoring softly in his modified bunk. Hinata was fast asleep, but his fingers were twitching on the blanket, and his breathing was quick and irregular. In the grey light, his face was tight and drawn, his brow furrowed.

The rest of the beds were empty.

They were probably already awake. They probably were finishing up packing. They probably-

Tsukishima hurried out of the bunkroom - down the empty hall -

The door of the living room was closed, but through it, he could hear two low voices, talking indistinctly.

_ Of course. Of course. _

Tsukishima swallowed down the tightness in his chest and paused just outside the old pine door, straining his ears to catch Akaashi’s and Bokuto’s words.

“-drive to the base of her mountain.” That was Akaashi. “You remember the way up by air, yes?”

“Course I do!” Bokuto answered. “And  _ this _ one will have to run the rest of the way up.” Bokuto’s voice rose with affection.  _ This one? _ “With Lev. How d’you feel about that, bro?”

There was a distinctly unenthusiastic groan. Kuroo. Of course - he and Lev wouldn’t be able to fly up with them.

“At any rate, we should leave soon. She’s not exactly nearby. I’ll go make sure that the rest are up.” Akaashi’s voice was moving closer.

Tsukishima realized what was going on just in time. He stuttered back to avoid the door swinging open. Akaashi, in the doorway, raised an eyebrow up at him. “Oh, you’re awake. Get something to eat, we aren’t bringing much perishable food.”

“I - okay.” Tsukishima stepped to the side to let them pass, then entered the living room.

For the first time that Tsukishima could remember, the fireplace was dark. It made sense; there was no point kindling up last night’s coals considering they didn’t know when - if - they’d be back. On the sofa, Kuroo was sprawled out shamelessly in Bokuto’s lap, his limbs thrown out in all directions. His eyes were closed, but his mouth hung half-open in a dopey grin. Bokuto was absorbed in petting him, winding his fingers through the thick black hair to scritch at his head.

“You melted him,” Tsukishima observed, coming up next to them and looking down at Kuroo’s blissed-out form.

“Mm,” Bokuto agreed. His fingers found a good spot at the nape of Kuroo’s neck - and like yanking the ignition on a lawnmower, something in Kuroo’s vocal cords started rumbling, deep and throaty.

Purring.

He was  _ purring. _

Tsukishima raised an eyebrow.

“Does he normally do that?”

“When he’s really happy, yeah,” Bokuto answered, more quietly than Tsukishima had ever heard him speak. They were interrupted by Kuroo groaning in euphoria and wriggling around in place to press closer to Bokuto, who smiled fondly down at his friend. “Tsukishima, lend a hand? He likes tummy rubs too.”

Tsukishima smiled beatifically at Bokuto, gently slid his hands under where Kuroo’s t-shirt was already riding up, and dug his fingers into Kuroo’s sides instead.

Kuroo yelped and jumped half a foot in the air, arms shooting down to cover his sides. The spell was broken, and Tsukishima snickered to himself as he walked away.

“Tsukishima," Bokuto called after him, “you’ve got character problems!”

It was a pretty normal morning, after all.

* * *

"Oh," was all Tsukishima could say.

It was past seven by now, and the rising sun had burned off most of the mist amongst the forests and hollows of the mountains. Akaashi had woken Hinata with a gentle touch to his shoulder, and kicked the side of Lev's bunk until he whined his way into wakefulness. Tsukishima had consumed his morning bagel and made some obligatory comments about the nature of Hinata's tousled bedhead (bad) and Kuroo's usual head (worse) and Bokuto's stiff-gelled hairstyle (about as terrible as it could get). They'd shrugged on the packs that they'd loaded up the previous night - light steel frames wrapped with wax-rubbed canvas, packed with dried food and full canteens and Bokuto's first-aid kit and Akaashi's maps and Kuroo's tiny spider-stove, with sleeping bags fixed securely to the outsides with nylon straps - and headed up to the roof.

And then the owl and crow hybrids jumped off the roof to swoop low over a narrow, barely-perceptible trail that zigzagged down the mountainside, as, on the ground, Kuroo leapt nimbly between the sliding tumbles of massive boulders and Lev skidded gracelessly behind him. And now, in the trailhead clearing, at a small packed-earth lot next to a smaller packed-earth road, there was parked-

Kuroo raised an eyebrow at Tsukishima and leaned back against the side of the rust-eaten white van tucked up against the woods, arms folded over his chest. “What, did you think I just ran to work every day?”

"I did!" said Hinata.

"Well, that sounds like a you problem," Kuroo told him, as he turned towards the driver's door. "Anyway-"

"Yes, as I was saying." Akaashi stepped smoothly in front of Kuroo, fanning out their wings a little to block him as he tried to duck around them. "I'm driving. Because Kuroo doesn't have a license."

Kuroo frowned. "Akaashi, I drive every day."

_ "Illegally-" _

"And have I  _ ever _ been pulled over-"

As they bickered, Tsukishima unclipped the pack where it was strapped onto his torso, letting it thunk down to the gravel behind him. He shrugged his shoulders a few times, giving his wings a few hearty flaps to relieve their ache. The pack was narrow enough to fit between the roots of his wings, but it sure wasn't comfortable.

Akaashi won the argument over driving, on the grounds that they, in fact, were the one carrying the keys in the pocket of their jeans. Bokuto and Kuroo scuffled briefly for shotgun and ended up just hugging, and Tsukishima lifted his pack into the back of the van and slipped around to take the seat right behind Akaashi's. Bokuto bundled Kuroo, who didn't seem to mind losing shotgun as much as ending the hug with Bokuto, into the ancient cracked-leather backseat, and then hopped up next to Akaashi.

Lev clambered willingly enough into the far back, where he folded himself up like a paperclip in a heap of gangly limbs. Hinata, the only one left outside, planted his hands on his hips.  _ "Hey, _ how come I have to go in the far back?"

“Because you're a runt," Tsukishima explained.

_ "Lev _ is back there! So the tallest should be in the back, and I should be in the front!"

"Lev is back there because he's bendy. Get in the van, Hinata."

Hinata opened his mouth to protest, but then squawked with indignancy instead - Tsukishima had unbuckled himself and leaned out of the van to yank Hinata in by the front of his t-shirt. His sneakers scrabbled uselessly against the dirt as Tsukishima caught him by the arms and manhandled Hinata's smaller body over his lap and into the far back row of seats. Kuroo leaned over to give him room, eyes gleaming with amusement. And before he could fight for a better seat, the van coughed to life under Akaashi's key.

As they bumped out of the parking lot, Kuroo announced, fake cheerful, “Alright, say bye-bye to the E-shaped house, kids!”

“What will Petco think about your sudden disappearance?” Tsukishima wondered aloud.

“They’ll probably assume he got adopted,” Akaashi assured him. Bokuto sniggered next to them.

_ "You _ two," said Kuroo, "need to stop ganging up on me."

"Well, you just make it so easy." Tsukishima offered, voice angelic, as the dirt road lilted up and over a knoll. The little lot disappeared behind them, and then they were forging ahead into new territory.

Kuroo leaned back, digging his knees into the back of Bokuto's seat. The road bent and curved through the forest. Deep green light filtered down through the cover of the thick pine needles. As Tsukishima watched out the window, a gangly half-grown mule deer paused several yards from the road with one dark hoof in the air, inquisitive eyes following the mismatched carful of hybrids.

As if the whole world were dappled green light and half-grown mule deer. As if there had never been such thing as heavy black collars.

He could almost call it...  _ Peaceful- _

“Are we there yet?” asked Lev.

“I swear to God,” Akaashi said to the rearview mirror, “if you do that for the whole drive-”

“Okay, okay.”

There was brief silence, and then Bokuto swiveled his head to look at Akaashi, all wide-eyed golden innocence. “Are we there yet?”

Akaashi swerved to hit a pothole, and Bokuto hooted in protest. “Akaashi-”

“Quiet,” Akaashi cut him off. “I’m driving.”

Bokuto hooted indignantly again, and Kuroo rolled his eyes at the noise. “For the last time, you have human vocal cords-”

_ “It’s the theory of the thing!” _

A few short, bumpy stretches of packed dirt later, they turned onto a real road, and the van rumbled on through snowcapped mountains surging up around them. And then Tsukishima had to tolerate Bokuto and Kuroo warbling along in pathetic semblance of harmony to bubbly pop radio he didn’t recognize as Hinata attempted (and failed, because he hadn’t learned the  _ words _ to any pop songs in the  _ School) _ to sing along That was bad enough, and then Lev started howling, which was just  _ terrible. _ Especially when some song about igniting came on, and Bokuto started bouncing up and down on his seat on every time he and Kuroo sang  _ bounce - bounce, bounce - bounce, bounce - bounce, bounce _ .

“Don’t make me turn this car around,” Akaashi said, sounding strained.

Bokuto just laughed at them, until Akaashi actually flicked on the turn signal. Then he abruptly stopped singing (although Lev continued to yell something wordless and tuneless) and turned to stare at Akaashi with huge eyes.  _ “Agkaaaaash-” _

“This is our exit,” Akaashi told him, nodding out the window as a faded green sign .

“Oh.” Bokuto sat back in his seat. “I don’t recognize it from the ground.”

“Inherent sense of direction,” Kuroo drawled, “my  _ ass.” _

_ “Hey.”  _ Bokuto twisted his head around to stare at Kuroo. “You’re right! But don’t hate.” And then he turned his head even further, until it was nearly straight back - and grinned at Hinata’s gasp. “That’s an owl thing, you know-”

“He taught himself to do it when we were little,” Akaashi said, “because he thought it would look cool.”

_ “Agkgaaashiiiii!” _

The smooth pavement didn’t last very long - it turned cracked and broken, then disappeared entirely. The van bounced over the bumpy packed dirt, rattling Tsukishima’s teeth in his head. The radio fizzled and scratched. Hinata leaned forward, watching through the windshield as the road snaked through a tiny cluster of buildings and started to climb up the side of the notch. “Where are we?”

“The most magical place on earth!” Bokuto answered. He fiddled with the radio, searching for something other than static. “The town of Navel.”

Tsukishima couldn’t hold in a snort. “Navel?”

Akaashi raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t make fun of it. Our host is relatively intimidating.”

Tsukishima shook his head. “I can’t be intimidated by someone who lives in the town of Bellybutton.”

“We’ll see about that,” Akaashi muttered.

“Who are we visiting, anyway?” Hinata piped up from the back row of seats. Next to him, Lev was staring out the window at the trees and vibrating a little.

“We’re going to see an old friend,” Akaashi answered him.

“An old friend?” Hinata leaned forward and hung off the back of Tsukishima’s seat. “Like, from your flock when you were in the School?”

“Patience,” Akaashi said to the rearview mirror. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Is there a whole litter of cats, too?” Tsukishima asked, glancing over at Kuroo.

“We’re around,” Kuroo answered. Tsukishima, recognizing the tightness in his voice, didn’t press it. Hinata had no such tact.

“Did you know someone, Kuroo?” he asked, and Kuroo’s shoulders tensed.

“This is our stop,” Akaashi cut in, and Tsukishima looked up in surprise. He hadn’t noticed it, but Akaashi had pulled the van over at a small clearing off the main road.

Akaashi switched off the ignition, and the six of them spilled out onto the packed dirt. Kuroo leaned against the van for balance as he stretched his legs. Bokuto flapped his wings a few times, buffeting Tsukishima with the wind he generated.

Akaashi glanced around the clearing, and then over at Kuroo and Lev. “There’s no trail, and this is the closest we can get in the car. Will you be able to make it up?”

“Of course we can!” Lev answered. “Who d’you think you’re talking to?”

“You’re heading up on foot?” asked Tsukishima. “That doesn’t seem efficient.”

As Lev cracked his knuckles, Kuroo shot Tsukishima a grin. “We can make a little better time than your average human, you know.”

“We’ll still get there sooner, though!” Bokuto put in. He put his hands on his hips, chin jutting out smugly. “Cause we can  _ fly.” _

Kuroo hummed noncommittally. “Well, maybe not if we get a head start. Lev-”

“Yes!”

The pair darted off into the trees, Kuroo tossing a cackle over his shoulder at Bokuto’s indignant cry.

“Well, we can’t let them  _ beat _ us! Come on!” Without waiting for an answer, Bokuto sprang into the air, then began to rise higher with powerful flaps of his wings. As the rest of the bird kids followed, the little lot was quickly swallowed up by trees, and the mountain rose steeply up with them.

“How far is it, exactly?” Tsukishima asked, directing his question to Akaashi.

Akaashi shot him a faintly exasperated look. “If you ask me  _ are we there yet-” _

“There!” Bokuto pointed at a slab of bare rock that jutted slightly out over the mountainside. As they swooped down, one after another, Tsukishima caught sight of a clearing in the pines just beyond the ledge, and a little building - a wooden cabin, with antennae bristling like porcupine needles on its roof.

Bokuto hit the ground hard, skidding halfway across the little clearing and sending up a spray of pine needles and dirt. Akaashi landed lightly on their feet behind him - followed by Tsukishima, who hit with a few short, hard steps, and Hinata, who performed his usual ass-first touchdown. He was getting pretty good at it.

Bokuto’s big voice boomed across the clearing.  _ “Honey, I’m home!” _

“Honey?” Hinata asked Tsukishima, standing up and brushing pine needles off the back of his shorts.

“Quiet,” said Tsukishima, who didn’t know either.

A pale face flashed in the window, and then the door of the cabin slammed open and a brown-and-white blur was streaking towards Bokuto.

Alarmed, Hinata startled forward, but Akaashi stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Hinata glanced up at them curiously - Akaashi was watching the scene unfold with a small smile on their face.

The blur slammed into Bokuto at top speed and volume, then resolved itself into the shape of a girl around Bokuto and Kuroo’s age. She had reddish-brown hair, a heart-shaped face, and a permanent sardonic smile, but more noticeable were the huge white wings folded in against her back, the tips reaching nearly to her knees. As the three boys watched, she cheerfully shoved Bokuto off the ledge and leapt out after his trailing whoop, snapping her wings out to display them in full before she disappeared into a dive.

Hinata gasped and dashed in their direction before Akaashi caught the back of his shirt. He looked back over his shoulder with a frantic expression. “Akaashi, he’s going to die!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But-!”

“It’s good to see you, Kaori,” Akaashi said to the taller, younger girl who had emerged from the cabin at a more sedate pace.

“You too, sib.” She pulled them into a brief but affectionate embrace, and they released Hinata to hug her back.

Hinata tipped his head to the side, having forgotten about Bokuto entirely. “Sib…?”

Kaori put on a look of mock hurt. “You didn’t tell your friends that you had a sister?”

“I’ve only known him for a few weeks,” Akaashi pointed out. Hinata was too excited to care.

“Whoa! That’s so cool!” He bounced up onto the balls of his feet, examining Kaori in this new light. With her straight, tawny hair, her friendly smile, and the freckles splattered across her tanned skin, the resemblance wasn’t immediately apparent. But she and Akaashi were roughly the same height, both were slim but muscled, and they shared the same shrewd grey-green eyes. “Are your parents both owl people too? I didn’t know we could have kids! Do you think I could have kids? I mean, I guess not right now, but-”

“Slow down, kiddo,” Kaori told Hinata, laughing. She planted her hand on the top of his head to hold him still. “We have the same parents, but we were born in vitro after the whitecoats messed around with our genes, just like everyone else. It just means our parents donated twice.”

“Oh.” Hinata deflated a little, then perked up again. “That’s still really cool!”

“Thanks!” Kaori led the three of them over to the ledge, where they could see Bokuto and the other girl rising back up towards the clearing and hear their delighted shouts. The pair passed the ledge and continued until they were high in the sky, and then the girl tackled Bokuto, digging her knuckles into his skull and sending them both off-balance. They plummeted downwards, yelling indistinctly, and had nearly reached the overlook before she released him and they broke apart in mid-air. In unison, two sets of wings caught the air, and two excited kids began ascending upwards again, the girl beating her wings with slow, powerful strokes, Bokuto his with faster, lighter ones.

“Is she trying to kill him?” Hinata asked Kaori curiously.

“What, Yukie? No.” Kaori gave Akaashi a confused look over Hinata’s head. Her sibling just shrugged. “They’re very close, they love each other a lot.”

“Oh! Are they siblings too?”

“Nope, but we’re all from the same brood. Like you two are, I’m guessing.” She gestured to Hinata and Tsukishima’s glossy black wings, identical in all but size.

“I’m still convinced this one is actually part pigeon,” Tsukishima said.

_ “Hey!” _

“That was a pretty good burn,” said a voice directly behind Tsukishima - and he nearly jumped out of his pants.

_ “Jesus _ \- don’t  _ do _ that, at least Akaashi has an excuse-”

“I really can’t help it,” Kuroo told him, smug smile twining around the corners of his mouth. His voice was a little breathy, and sweat shone on his forehead. “Cats are silent creatures of the night.”

“You are a creature of the couch,” Tsukishima muttered.

And then there was Lev, who burst out of the woods a minute or two afterwards with a loud “Hi, Kaori! Did I beat Kur-oh.”

“Hi, Lev.” She waved at him. “You didn’t.”

On their next pass by the ledge, Bokuto and Yukie circled in to land again, and Yukie instantly leapt forward to squeeze Bokuto in a tight hug as he wheezed for breath. And then she released him to plant her hands on her hips, keen eyes raking into his. “Alright, what are you here for?”

Bokuto beamed and threw his arms out to either side. “Can’t I just miss your face?”

Yukie gave him a Look. Bokuto shrank, but he still had enough resolve to look affronted.  _ “It’s happened before!” _

“You would’ve just flown,” Yukie pointed out. “But you brought the cat and the dog instead. And you picked up some strays.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the two crow kids. “Who are they?”

“Ah - well, we were hoping you could help us with that, actually-”

“You were, were you?” Yukie turned her head all the way backwards, and then grinned at Hinata’s shock. “It’s an owl thing, you know.”

Hinata squawked in indignation and pointed an accusing finger at her. “That’s not going to work on me again!”

Yukie’s eyes widened in shock, and then she whipped around back to Bokuto. “You gave away our secret?”

“I -  _ it was an accident-” _

“I  _ taught _ you to do that, you ass!”

“You did  _ not! _ I had the  _ idea-” _

_ “I figured out how to-” _

“You were both  _ four,” _ said Akaashi, with practiced weariness. “Let’s go inside.”

The cabin was smaller than the E-shaped house, but looked much more modern. In the common room, the sofa faced a large flatscreen, and by the biggest window, a wooden desk held a computer with two adjacent monitors.

Hinata stared at the flatscreen, and then boggled up at Kaori. “You guys have TV?”

“Yeah, by satellite. Haven’t these guys-” Kaori nodded at Bokuto and Akaashi- “introduced you to Spongebob yet?”

“Spongebob?” Hinata crinkled his brow.

Yukie grinned and linked her fingers together, stretching her arms out in front of her to crack her knuckles. “Oh, kiddo, wait til you hear about Twitter-”

“Don’t you dare,” Akaashi interrupted, sounding a little strangled. “We’re here on business.”

“Alright, alright.” Yukie went over to the desk and pressed a button on the computer. “So, what business?”

The rest of the group crowded up around the back of her chair as the computer booted up, and Bokuto explained a largely abbreviated version of the situation. Yukie listened, then turned her sharp gaze on Hinata and Tsukishima. “And you aren’t from the same facility as us?”

Bokuto paused for a moment, uncertainty fluttering over his face, but Akaashi supplied, “Even if they hadn’t escaped in Konoha’s explosion, they would’ve remembered it. It destroyed nearly the whole place.”

“That’s right!” said Bokuto. “And I don’t remember ever seeing crow hybrids around the place.”

“Hm, that’s true. Corvidae, huh?” Yukie turned to her screens, jiggled the mouse, and tapped in her password. “Let me just pull up the School files I have-”

“Are you hacking!” said Lev.

“I’ve had these files since I first hacked into their database,” Yukie told him. “When I was eleven.”

_ “She’s so cool,” _ Hinata whispered to Bokuto, who nodded vehemently in agreement.

Yukie’s fingers flew across the keyboard, eyes scanning the screen. It didn’t take long before she clicked her tongue and announced, “Found ya!”

“You found the  _ School?” _ said Tsukishima, momentarily too impressed to be apathetic.

Yukie shook her head. “They don’t list addresses, like,  _ anywhere. _ Cause of security. It’s all  _ at Facility One _ and that sort of thing. But I found the corvid research group. Any chance you knew some plant hybrids?”

Hinata glanced up at Tsukishima, who shook his head. “Nope.”

“Well, you were next-door neighbors when you were little. Uhmm…” A few more clicks and Yukie pulled up a map. Her pointer settled on a valley in the hills near the coast. “They’re here, now. Kaori keeps tabs on them, once in a while. They broke out before you. Like, way before you.” She switched back to the School file, and scanned further down the page. “And… Apparently there was another group, too. Eagle hybrids. They’re gone from the School, but I’ve never run across them - Kaori, have you?”

Kaori shook her head, leaning forward over Yukie’s shoulder to examine the records. “I didn’t even know there were other avian hybrids at all, before these guys showed up.”

Yukie nodded. “So… The plant group is probably your best bet.”

So they weren’t going back to the School quite yet.

Tsukishima couldn’t determine quite how he felt about that, and decided on  _ vaguely annoyed, _ mostly out of habit.

Hinata nudged Tsukishima and whispered, “See, that’s  _ five _ groups that have broken out now. I  _ told _ you it was suspicious.”

“I never  _ disagreed,” _ Tsukishima hissed back at him, bending a little to reach his ear. Straightening up, he said, at a normal volume, “Thank you very much, Shirofuku-san. And now-”

“-we’re off to the coast!” Hinata interrupted. He hopped up and down a little, eyebrows jumping around with excitement. “Yukie! Can you tell Akaashi where we’re going, exactly? They’re the best at navigation.”

Tsukishima crossed his arms over his chest.  _ One  _ of them had to be the adult about this. “Hinata, you’re being presumptuous. There’s no way that-”

“I’m in,” Bokuto interrupted. He cocked a considerable eyebrow at Tsukishima. “You were gonna say something about us staying behind, weren’t you? Tough luck! You’re ours now.”

Bokuto was an idiot. There was no  _ reason _ for them to-

“He’s right,” Akaashi added, inclining their head towards Tsukishima. “We aren’t letting you two run off without us. Besides, I go where Bokuto goes.”

“Haven’t you always,” Kaori murmured to them, with affection.

Tsukishima opened his mouth - closed it - and turned to Kuroo.

Kuroo’s face was a little tight, and horrible, traitorous uncertainty fluttered through Tsukishima’s stomach. It was _ridiculous,_ because it wasn’t like he’d expect anyone to _agree_ to this suicide mission in the _first_ place, he’d barely even agreed to it _himself,_ _Bokuto_ was only coming because he wasn’t smart enough to know otherwise, Akaashi wouldn’t have even come _this_ far if they weren’t here for Bokuto, and there was certainly no way that-

“I’m going,” said Kuroo. “You can count on that.”

And it might’ve been the steel in his voice, or the strange intensity in his face, but Tsukishima didn’t question him after that.

Kuroo nudged Lev with his foot. “This one is, too. As little as I enjoy spending time in the car with him.”

Lev looked indignant.  _ “Hey! _ When did I ever say I was going home?”

Bokuto’s cheeks split with a feral grin. He stepped away from the desk, linked his fingers together and stretched out his arms in front of him.

“Then let’s hit the skies.”


	4. allies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some suspicious bread, a Venus flytrap, and an unlikely ally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE'VE REACHED THE HALFWAY POINT. enjoy the meme kids, this chapter put me through the wringer but I thoroughly enjoyed writing it 8]
> 
> [the](http://www.twitter.com/owlinaminor) [usual](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis/status/835183444674113537) [nonsense](http://vivasimplemindedness.tumblr.com/post/157657534548/the-sharpest-lives-chapter-4)

"Are we th-”

They were the first words anyone had spoken in the last hour or so, but Hinata cut himself off with a squeak halfway through his sentence and darted up to put Bokuto between himself and Akaashi’s cold stare. In his elbow, Tsukishima muffled a snicker.

The air was crisp and clear, and the four bird kids had been riding a steady current westward all afternoon. Beneath them, the craggy mountains had smoothed and settled into gentler hills, bare rock of the peaks giving way to scrubby pines and then slender birches and gnarled oaks.

“Yes, though,” Akaashi said.

“Hmm?” Bokuto glanced down at them. Akaashi was flying a couple meters below him, and Hinata, at the top of the stack of bird kids, craned his neck to peek around Bokuto’s body at them too. Tsukishima had elected to fly point, off Bokuto’s right side.

“There.” Akaashi inclined their head towards the ground. A few miles ahead of them, two crags rose up side by side, standing higher than the rolling hills around them. “Their valley is just past those peaks.”

Hinata boggled down at them. “You know where we are that precisely?”

“I looked it up on Google Earth,” Akaashi said. “On Yukie’s computer.”

“Oh.” Hinata deflated, then perked up again and gathered up his wings to put on a burst of speed.  “That’s still really cool! Let’s go meet-”

“Not yet!” Bokuto interrupted. Below Hinata, he angled his course slightly southwest, below the valley. “C’mon, we’ve gotta make camp first.”

"What?! Why?!”

“It sure must be nice to be an airhead,” Tsukishima mused, deliberately raising his voice so that Hinata could hear. He was in an unusually good mood, and had been happily needling Hinata all afternoon.

“Huh?!” Hinata scowled down at him. _“What’s that supposed to mean?”_

“Well, if _you_ want to just rush right in and hope they think you’re cute, that’s fine.” Tsukishima shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “For my own part, we don’t know _anything_ about these people, and it’s almost nighttime. They might want to kill us. They might even be _adults.”_

The whole group shuddered at the thought, and Bokuto tilted his wings to curve their course more dramatically, giving the valley a wide berth.

The good thing about the foothills was that the whole area was speckled with summer campgrounds, empty now that autumn was setting in. After the flock touched down at the site Akaashi had chosen, a place near the river called Green Valley Campground several miles past the mouth of the valley, Bokuto and Tsukishima took off again to scout out what they could from the air. Kuroo sent Lev to lope along the ridge below them.

They circled back towards the valley, and, at Bokuto’s direction, began climbing steeply. When their course finally leveled out, as they glided towards the valley, they were higher than Tsukishima had ever flown before. The broad sea gleamed in the distant west, the cool air was thinning in his lungs, and, had he been fully human, the ground would have been nothing but fuzzy splotches to his eyes.

Bokuto, whose vision was even sharper than Tsukishima’s, pointed down at the ground ahead of them. “Hey, see that pavilion? It looks like this place might’ve been an abandoned summer camp or something. That’d be convenient, if you didn’t have anywhere to live. The E-shaped house is an old ski lodge, we think. Also, shh. We don’t want them to hear us talking.”

As they glided directly over the valley, Tsukishima chose not to point out that Bokuto was the only one who’d even been saying anything. Instead, he just looked down.

At the top of the valley, where the stream cut a sharp, glittering groove between the two stony ridges, a shingled roof had been built over a huge wooden wheel, turning slowly as the stream pushed its spokes. Beyond the waterwheel, the stream splashed over a slide of rocks and down into a narrow, deep channel, cutting quickly between broad, flat rocks. On one, what seemed to be a human form was stretched out, soaking up the last of the day’s sun.

Past that, the water widened into a river, flowing silver-blue between sloping banks where neat rows of crops sprang up from the fertile soil. Trees dotted the valley, boughs thick with shady green leaves that were just beginning to tinge yellow. Here and there stood structures - a patch of sand encircled by a high fence, a few small huts, one larger pavilion near the top of the valley with smoke curling out of its red-brick chimney. Near the mouth of the valley, the water swelled into a swimming hole, darker with depth, and then flowed onwards.

The hills rose up steeply to either side, and flashes of silver hair weaving between the trees on the ridge alerted Tsukishima to Lev’s presence. Other than him, and the person sunbathing, only a few people were visible to Tsukishima’s scanning eyes - two dark heads circling each other in the fenced ring, one blonde sitting between rows of corn by the river-

"Hey, that person’s watching us.”

Tsukishima glanced at Bokuto, and then followed his line of sight down to the valley. Outside the pavilion, a tall figure was standing perfectly still, face tipped upwards to the sky.

They hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“Maybe their hobby is bird-watching,” Tsukishima offered.

Bokuto didn’t respond, hovering with slow, regular flaps.

Tsukishima knew that the pair of them were too high to seem like anything but birds, barely larger than specks in the sky. Even his own inhumanly sharp eyes could barely make out the shape of the person below.

But he still couldn’t shake the prickle of a stare fixed directly on him.

The sun cast late-afternoon rays across a brilliant blue early-autumn sky, and the only clouds were high and wispy. For all Tsukishima’s time spent in flight, he’d never really comprehended how very _empty_ the air was.

“Let’s head back,” said Bokuto suddenly.

By way of answer, Tsukishima banked into a curve and took off towards the mouth of the valley, pushing a little more speed into his wings than normal.

He didn’t look back, except to confirm that Bokuto was following him - the guy really could move silently when he wasn’t talking. But he could still feel the figure’s piercing eyes, following the flight of their forms until they disappeared from sight.

* * *

When they flew back down to Green Valley Campground, the canvas of their tent was stretched out on one side of the campsite, and Akaashi's and Hinata's voices were muffled inside it. Kuroo, the only one of the group who could cook at all, was poking at a cast-iron pot over a busy little fire in the ring of stones at the center of the packed-earth clearing.

“We’re back!” Bokuto called, touching down on the empty side of the clearing. After him, Tsukishima tipped his wings back to slow his descent - _yes_ \- and landed with just a few light steps.

"Hey, perfect timing!" Kuroo pulled the stick he'd been using to stir out of the pot and pointed it at the pair of them. "Keep an eye on this for me, I'm gonna grab myself a sweatshirt."

He pulled open the flap of the tent and stooped down into it, and then Akaashi and Hinata both emerged. Hinata’s eyes lit up instantly as he bounced over to Bokuto. “What did you find? Were the plant people there?”

"We'll tell you in a bit!" Bokuto wandered over to the fire, peering into the pot with interest. "We've been flying all day, I'm hungry!"

"You won't have to suffer for much longer," Kuroo’s voice said from inside the tent. "The soup was almost done a couple minutes ago."

"Awesome! Pass me your sweatshirt?"

"Eh? Sure." Kuroo emerged from the tent with a baggy red hoodie half-pulled over his head, tugged it off, and handed it over to Bokuto. "What for - oh."

Bokuto had wrapped the fabric around his hand to form a bulky mitt. As Hinata watched in interest, Bokuto reached into the fire and grasped the handle of the cast-iron pot to lift it up. He placed the pot down carefully on a flat rock at the edge of the fire pit, unwound the hoodie from his hand, and tossed it back to Kuroo, who looked mournfully down at the dark new burn mark across the front. "Thanks, bro!"

"You're welcome," Kuroo sighed as he pulled his hoodie back on.

Bokuto went to dig out bowls and spoons from his pack, and once Lev arrived, the flock perched around the fire on the old stumps and flat rocks. For a moment, everything was quiet as they dug in.

Kuroo's soup was hearty and rich, and Tsukishima sipped slowly, appreciating the taste.  
Flying burned a lot of calories, and there really was just something about food where you could identify the ingredients.

Hinata, on the other hand, was his usual degree of immune to the finer pleasures of life. He inhaled his bowl of soup, chugged a couple mouthfuls of water from Bokuto's canteen to alleviate the burn of the hot broth, and then placed his hands on his knees and stared unblinkingly at Tsukishima.

Tsukishima shifted a little. "Stop looking at me like that."

Hinata didn't move.

"I'm _eating."_

"..."

_"Hinata."_

"Well, how long are you going to just _sit_ there?!"

“He’s right,” Kuroo spoke up. “I need deets.”

Tsukishima swallowed down his mouthful of soup and shrugged. “We didn’t see much. A couple people. Bokuto thinks they live in an old summer camp.”

Kuroo propped his chin on his hands. "You seem preoccupied."

"Yes, with _eating."_

"Hmm."

Tsukishima pushed his sports glasses up his nose, with his middle finger.

Kuroo put on a look of mock offense. “Hey, don’t… Flip me the _bird.”_

Akaashi let out a graceful snort at the pun, and Hinata giggled around his spoon. Tsukishima treated Kuroo to a dead-eyed stare, and a smile danced around the corners of Kuroo’s eyes. “Come on, that one was good-”

“One of them was watching us,” Bokuto said.

“They weren’t _watching_ us,” Tsukishima insisted. “We were way too high up for them to see.”

Bokuto slurped down another mouthful of soup. “I felt watched. Did you?”

“I - there’s no way they _could’ve_ seen us-”

 _“Normal_ plants don’t have eyes,” Kuroo put in. “Let alone superhuman ones.”

Tsukishima was ready to be done with this conversation. “They just looked like normal people. I don’t know what Yukie meant by plant hybrids. Though we didn't get low enough to see them closely."

"Hmm,” Kuroo mused. “Lev, did you notice anything? You were closer to the ground.”

“Nope!” said Lev. “But I’m colorblind.”

“…Right.” Kuroo stood up and picked up the cast-iron pot from the rock. "Well, there's only one way to find out. Let's sleep tonight, and then we'll head out tomorrow to pay your old neighbors a visit. Lev, you're washing this."

"What!" Lev protested. "Why me?!"

"Cause I made the food."

"Why not someone else?! Why not Hinata?!"

Kuroo dumped the congealing pot into Lev's lap. _"Hinata_ didn't play Wonderwall on repeat for an hour in the van earlier."

_"So that's what this is about-"_

"Yup. Wash it."

Lev complained loudly, but after Kuroo calmly wrapped his burnt sweatshirt around his ears to drown out the noise, he gave up and disappeared down the short path to the river with the pot swinging from his hand. Bokuto and Hinata followed, chattering about swimming, and after a few minutes, Tsukishima did, too.

He found the river wide and flat, flowing lazily after a summer of heat. It was too low to swim, but Bokuto and Hinata were wading around in the shallows, making wordless delighted noises at each other. Lev was sitting on the small patch of sand at the opening of the trail, scrubbing the pot out with sand from the riverbed.

Tsukishima paused to raise an eyebrow at him. "Having fun?"

Lev whined piteously up at him, and Tsukishima treated him to an angelic smile before he knelt down to untie his sneakers. He left his socks and shoes on the bank, then picked his way carefully out to a flat rock that split the current mid-stream, where he sat down to watch the water and breathe in the dusk as it faded into night.

The stones were slippery under his toes, and the water cool around his ankles. The moon rippled and the strew of stars glittered in the flow of the river. Deep shadows dozed under the spread of the trees on the banks. Tsukishima fanned his wings out behind him, dipping the tips into the slow current.

Behind him, there was a splash, an _oof!,_ and then Bokuto's hearty laughter ringing out over the water. "Whoops! Gotcha!"

"Thanks, Bokuto-san!" As Bokuto set him back down in the stream with a slight _splish,_ Hinata giggled too, light and carefree.

Tsukishima opened his mouth, tasting the clear night air, matching his heartbeat to the murmur of the river and the voices of his flock behind him, listening to the noises of all the small living things in the trees and the loam of the banks. Committing them to chemical memory, over and over and over again.

It was a long time before he crossed back to shore, smiled sweetly again at Lev (who was still toiling over the pot), and wandered up to the campsite. Kuroo's feet were sticking out of the open tent flap, and Tsukishima could hear his gentle snores. Akaashi was nowhere to be seen.

Tsukishima glanced around the edges of the clearing - and then looked again, peering closer into the shadows this time. The three loudmouths down at the river would be safe with each other, but if Kuroo had already fallen asleep - Tsukishima hadn't even thought to-

"Up here," said a quiet voice, directly over his head.

 _"Jesus,"_ Tsukishima choked.

With no more noise than a soft _whoosh_ of their wings, Akaashi dropped down next to him, landing lightly on their feet. "Sorry."

"You are not," Tsukishima mumbled. "What were you doing up there? Roosting?"

Akaashi's eyes flitted up into the foliage where they'd been perched. Tsukishima followed their gaze, but his corvid eyes couldn't penetrate the darkness like Akaashi's owlish ones could. "What is it?"

"Ah - sorry. My pack is up there," Akaashi explained. "With all the food."

"What? Why?"

"I'd rather not attract a grizzly in the night, if it's all the same to you." Akaashi brushed a few pieces of bark off their jeans and turned towards the tent. “Ready to sleep? It’s getting late.”

Tsukishima hesitated.

“They’ll be fine,” Akaashi assured him. “Bokuto is much stronger than his personality would lead you to believe. And yours isn’t anywhere near helpless, either.”

“Hinata’s not _mine,”_ Tsukishima muttered. “And Lev?”

“Lev is useless,” Akaashi said bluntly. “But he’s a functional useless.”

Tsukishima snorted. “That’s fair.”

Inside the tent, Kuroo was sprawled out facedown across the spread of sleeping bags. One strand of black hair hanging down over his face was sucked up into his nostril each time he inhaled, and then fluttered back out on every exhale. Akaashi carefully maneuvered themself into the tent, avoiding Kuroo’s limbs.

“You shouldn’t worry about waking him up,” Tsukishima offered as he followed. “He deserves it.”

“He’s just,” Akaashi said. “So much more tolerable when he’s unconscious.”

“Does it really make a difference?" Tsukishima's face twisted, a little sour. "Even if he's asleep, it’s not like anyone can ever catch him off-guard.”

“Of course you can. Watch.” Akaashi sat down cross-legged next to Kuroo’s prone form, and began scritching his back through his t-shirt.

Kuroo awoke with a surprised _mrrr?_ , but he quickly realized what was going on and made a noise of happiness, stretching out further to allow Akaashi full access to his back. Akaashi scratched harder, and Kuroo reached out for the rucksack in front of him and started kneading it with his fingers. His eyelids fluttered slightly, then closed.

Akaashi moved their hand to the nape of Kuroo’s neck and started scratching slowly down his spine, pressing him down into his bedroll. As they reached the base of Kuroo’s spine, Kuroo’s butt involuntarily popped up into the air.

Tsukishima started laughing, and Akaashi allowed themself a small, satisfied smile. Kuroo flipped himself over, peering at Akaashi indignantly through his disheveled bangs. “Akaashi, why’d you have to show him that?”

“It’s funny,” Akaashi said.

“I’ll make sure to remember it,” Tsukishima added, and Kuroo gave him a baleful look.

Once Bokuto, Hinata, and Lev returned, the tent got crowded. It would’ve been too small entirely for most groups of six, but fortunately, the majority of the flock had no qualms about snuggling together for warmth. Tsukishima, at first, made a point of lying stiff as a board next to the pile of bodies in protest, but then Kuroo refused to stop suggesting that he could also go roost in the trees if he were uncomfortable, after which he gave up and resigned himself to dozing off with Hinata tucked into his side and Kuroo’s irredeemable bedhead pressed into the small of his back, below his folded wings.

* * *

"So… That's what Yukie meant," Hinata breathed.

"No shit," Tsukishima muttered back, with his usual warmth.

The boy up the path watched their exchange, gaze steady and unwavering.

They'd spent the better part of that morning debating how best to approach the valley. Hinata had proposed heading up from the mouth of the valley until they ran into someone, and then introducing themselves from there. Lev had wanted to wait until the valley's inhabitants were gathered for a meal, and then drop down from the sky into the center of the group and use the element of surprise to their advantage. Kuroo and Akaashi had agreed that that was a terrible idea, but couldn't decide whether it was better to hide the bird kids' wings until they determined if the plant people were friendly or not.

In the end, it didn't matter in the slightest, because when they touched down past the twin crags at the top of the valley and hiked up a faint deer-path towards the split at the top of the ravine, someone was waiting for them.

The boy had been seated on a rock at the side of the path, but as they approached, he got to his feet and stood in the center of the path - stance relaxed, eyes alert. He was stocky and solid, with spiky black hair and a peg leg reaching up to his right knee. His foot was bare, and his cargo pants were rolled up around one knee and tied off around the peg on the other one. A plain steel axe, blade sheathed in leather, was strapped across his back over his muscle tank.

His skin, and the scleras of his eyes, were tinted a deep forest-green.

Bokuto, at the front of the group, paused a few meters away from him. For a minute, nobody said anything.

"We're-!" Hinata began, then faltered. "Um-!"

"We're looking to talk to you guys," Kuroo supplied, stepping forward. "We have some questions about the place that these ones-" he nodded towards Tsukishima and Hinata- "came from."

"Figures," the boy said cryptically, in a deep, gravelly voice. He turned towards the mouth of the ravine. "Well, come on."

Hinata glanced towards Bokuto, who offered him an encouraging smile and an even-more-encouraging flex of his bicep. Reassured, Hinata set off after the boy, who was making a surprisingly quick pace despite the uneven stride of his mismatched legs.

"Lev," Tsukishima whispered, very calmly. "Why didn't you say they were _green."_

"I _told_ you," Lev hissed back, "I'm _colorblind!"_

Unfortunately, that point was indisputable.

They followed the boy up the deer-path and between the twin crags, and then leapt down the series of shelf-like rocks next to the tumbling stream. The pavilion Tsukishima had spotted the previous day wasn't far down the valley, and it was there that the boy led them - past the sides, where Tsukishima glanced in to see an array of picnic tables inside and a stone fireplace at the center, and towards the front of the structure, where a figure was watching out over the valley, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

 _"Oi,"_ the boy with the peg leg called out.

Without turning around, the figure said, in a light, musical voice, "I knew you'd find them, Iwa-chan."

"It wasn't hard," grunted 'Iwa-chan', falling into place at the second guy's shoulder as he turned around to examine the flock.

He was tall, although most of the flock had at least a centimeter or two on him. He was smiling at them, with perfectly white teeth. And his skin was tinged green, although lighter than the other plant hybrid's.

The green skin was striking. The perfect coif of his chocolate-brown hair was somewhat disorienting. But Tsukishima couldn't look away from his face - his eyes were sharp, keen in a way that reminded Tsukishima unnervingly of Kuroo. And his smile looked like a Venus flytrap, ready to bite.

"That's him," Tsukishima whispered to Hinata. "That's the one."

Hinata tipped his head. "Which one?"

"The one who was watching us."

"I thought you said there's no way they could've seen you," Hinata told him.

"I'm going to pluck out all your pinion feathers one of these days," Tsukishima muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

"I must admit, you're not who I was expecting," the guy said. “You’re from the School, I presume.”

“Me and Tsukishima are!” Hinata spoke up, nodding in Tsukishima’s direction. “We’re crow people.”

The guy smiled down at him. “We’re a clan of plant hybrids. Though I hope the chlorophyll in our skin would be indication enough of that.”

 _“The what?”_ Hinata whispered to Tsukishima.

 _“Shh,”_ said Tsukishima.

“I’m Oikawa Tooru,” the guy continued. “And this is-”

“Iwaizumi Hajime,” the boy with the peg leg finished, and nodded to the group in greeting.

“My second-in-command,” Oikawa added.

“We have some questions-” Akaashi began.

Oikawa nodded smoothly. “Of course, of course. You must be tired from travelling. Do you have somewhere to sleep?”

“We found an empty campground!” Lev announced. “So we set up our tent there.”

“Oh, really?” Oikawa tilted his head, eyes gleaming with curiosity. “Which campground?”

“It’s maybe medium-close,” Kuroo cut in, before Lev could open his mouth again.

“The one past the mouth of the valley? Green Valley Campground?”

“Mmm,” Kuroo hummed. “Maybe? We aren’t really familiar with the area.”

Oikawa’s nose scrunched slightly, but his pleasant tone didn’t waver. “Shame. Well, you’re welcome here, if you'd like something more comfortable than a tent.”

"Much appreciated," said Kuroo. He glanced up into the pavilion, back at Oikawa, and then towards Hinata, Tsukishima, and Lev. “If it’s alright, you three can probably go look around while we talk,” he told the trio of younger boys. “We don’t often see much resembling civilization.”

“Yes, I would imagine,” Oikawa mused. “You may explore, if you’d like.” He spread his arms, sweeping a gesture across the valley. “And you’re welcome to stay for dinner. For friends, we have plenty to share.”

His words were benevolent enough, and Hinata crowed with delight at the prospect of exploring. Iwaizumi caught Hinata's eye - and his teeth flashed white in a sudden twinkly-eyed grin, as merry as his resting face was hardened.

But Tsukishima paused, glancing at Kuroo.

Kuroo met his gaze, and then cut his eyes towards Hinata and Lev. Tsukishima resisted the urge to roll his eyes back - as if he hadn’t been saddled with protecting Hinata for years now already.

“Alright, then.” Tsukishima turned to follow an excited Hinata and Lev out of the pavilion. “We’ll see what we can find.”

Kuroo watched the three younger boys make their way down the hill towards the river, and then turned towards Oikawa. “Shall we?”

“Yes,” Oikawa agreed, still smiling. He moved to lead the way up the steps of the pavilion. “I’m sure we have plenty to discuss.”

* * *

It took about sixty seconds for Hinata to catch sight of the person sitting cross-legged in the nearest field of crops.

 _“Ohh!”_ he squawked, and pointed down towards the river. When Tsukishima looked, he recognized the same blonde head that he’d spotted there the previous evening - and, this close, he could tell that the person’s skin was tinted green, like Iwaizumi’s and Oikawa’s.

“That’s-”

_“There’s a person down there!”_

“Yes-”

Hinata leapt into motion, half-skidding down the slope of the long, waving grass towards the field. “I’m gonna go say hi to him!” he called over his shoulder.

“Alright,” Tsukishima said, “but don’t piss anyone off-”

“Hey, what are _they_ doing over there?” Lev interrupted him, voice fading as Hinata disappeared into the rows of corn.

The boy was facing away from him, and Hinata paused for a moment to examine him. His hair was bleached blonde and close-cropped, with two black strips across the back. He didn’t look particularly tall, but his bare back and arms were thick with muscle, and his hands were calloused and rough, with soil caked under his fingernails and staining the green skin of his bare feet to a darker brown. He wore only cargo shorts, and he was mumbling to himself, words too quiet to catch.

“Hello!” said Hinata.

The boy squawked and nearly toppled over, just barely throwing out a hand to catch himself. As he spun around, his wide eyes snapped up to meet Hinata’s - and then narrowed into a scowl as he caught sight of Hinata’s folded wings over his shoulders.

“Hi-” Hinata tried again.

“One of _you!”_ the boy spat, and launched himself up from the soil fists-first.

Hinata leapt backwards just in time. The boy’s knuckles whistled narrowly past the tip of his nose. “I - _wait-”_

The boy snarled and lunged for him again. Hinata’s wings snapped out, and he jumped into the air. He planted one foot on the boy’s shoulder, pushing himself up far enough to tumble over his head and land behind him.

As the boy spun around, teeth bared, Hinata held out his hands in a placating gesture. _“Wait!”_

Thankfully, he did. But his eyes were still blazing. “How did you get in here?” he barked.

“I - me and my flock are trying to find the School we came from!” Hinata tripped over his words in his hurry to get them out. “Our leader is talking to Oikawa-san and Iwaizumi-san right now - they said the rest of us could go explore-”

“Iwaizumi-san said you could?” the boy cut him off.

Hinata jerked a nod.

The boy studied him carefully.

“…What kind of creature are you?”

“I’m part crow,” Hinata answered, speaking a little more easily now that the boy wasn’t trying to kill him. “Like you guys are part plant.”

“Huh,” said the boy, and sat back down in the dirt, ignoring Hinata entirely.

Undeterred, Hinata folded his wings back in and squatted down next to him. “What’s your name? I’m Hinata.”

The boy didn’t answer at first, but as Hinata waited, he finally grumbled, “…Kyoutani.”

“What were you doing? I heard you talking-”

“You _heard?”_ Kyoutani twisted to look at Hinata, but then remembered that he was ignoring him and turned back away.

“I didn’t hear any of the words you said,” Hinata reassured him. “Just that you were talking. Who were you talking to? Yourself?”

“The _plants,”_ Kyoutani corrected him. “Not myself.”

Hinata tipped his head to stare at him. “Why?”

Kyoutani gave up on holding a conversation with his back to Hinata, and shifted to angle his side towards him. “It’s - it’s good for them. If you talk to them, they grow up stronger and healthier.”

Hinata grinned and rocked back on his heels. “You like plants, huh?”

He lost his balance and fell back on his ass as Kyoutani whipped around to glare at him. again. “You tryna say something? I can fight just as well as any of-”

“N-no! What?” Hinata hopped backwards. “Fight _who?”_

“You should know just as well as I do,” Kyoutani growled.

Oh.

The toothy yellow grin of an Eraser flashed across Hinata’s brain, and despite the warm sunlight, he shivered a little.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

Kyoutani shrugged and turned away again.

“Can I talk to the plants with you?” Hinata inquired.

“…Why?” Kyoutani examined him suspiciously.

“Cause I want to help them grow up big and strong!” Hinata scooted up to sit next to Kyoutani. “What do you say to them?”

“I - uh - I usually… Tell them stories.”

“Whose stories?”

Kyoutani grunted noncommittally. “Doesn’t matter. Yours. Anyone’s.”

Hinata thought for a moment, and then began.

“Well, I guess it started before we were born…”

* * *

“What are they _doing?”_ Lev asked, in an unsuccessful stage-whisper.

About fifty yards down the bank of the river, two boys were lying on a broad, flat slab of rock. At first glance, they seemed to be asleep - but both of them were positioned too stiffly to be sleeping, and Tsukishima’s sharp gaze could pick out the fact that both of their eyes were open.

One was lying on his back, with dusty brown hair and a snub nose. The other’s hair was shaved close to his head, and he was lying prone on his stomach, with his head pillowed on his forearms. Both were wearing swim trunks, and the snub-nosed one was wearing a binder, white fabric over his chest standing out against his green skin of his stomach.

As Tsukishima watched, the boy in the binder said something to the other. Both of them slowly rolled over, exposing their other side to the sun.

“Well…” said Tsukishima. “If they’re part plant, then it would make sense that they need to consume sunlight. For nutrients-”

“They’re philosophizing!” Lev finished.

 _“Photosynthesizing,”_ Tsukishima sighed. “Let’s go see who Hinata found.”

* * *

As it turned out, _three_ new people was entirely too many for Kyoutani, and he bolted off down the rows of corn the second he caught sight of Tsukishima and Lev heading up towards him and Hinata.

Hinata looked a little put out as he stood up and brushed off the seat of his shorts. “You guys scared him off!”

“He looks a lot scarier than we do,” Tsukishima mumbled.

_“He’s nicer than you are!”_

The next people they met were further down the river - a pair of boys a little older than them, sprawled out on the small, sandy beach next to scattered curls of steam rising from a shallow pit. Both were both long and lean, one strawberry-blonde and wearing a freckled grin, the other with a lazy smile and thick black waves of hair pulled into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck. Over their jeans, both had tied on sauce-spattered white aprons, and the freckly one wore a floppy white chef’s hat that had fallen down over one ear. They were sharing a loaf of fluffy white bread, passing it back and forth and ripping off bites with their teeth, and their skin, like the rest of the people in the valley, was tinged with green.

“Sup,” the dark-haired one greeted them as they approached. Unlike Kyoutani, he didn’t seem at all discomfited by the sudden presence of the three strangers - or Tsukishima’s and Hinata’s sooty wings. “You guys are hanging out here, huh? I’m Matsukawa. This goober is Hanamaki.”

“I’m Hinata!” Hinata introduced himself. “And this is Tsukishima, and Lev, and we’re - we’re from the School! Like you guys! We’re bird kids! We have wings!”

“I see that.” Matsukawa didn’t seem perturbed by the revelation, like Kyoutani had been. Instead, he just offered a slow smile. “They’re cool.”

“Sick,” Hanamaki put in.

“They are pretty sick!” Lev agreed.

Tsukishima frowned at him. “Lev, you don’t-”

“What are you making?” Hinata interrupted.

“We do the cookin’ around here,” Hanamaki explained. He gestured at the pit, where the scent of something cooking steamed up from beneath a cover of leaves. “We’re just bakin’ right now. Trout, I mean.” He raised his hunk of bread to his mouth and took a ponderous bite.

“You get to make _all_ the food?” Hinata dropped to his knees on the sand and bent forward to examine the pit, inhaling the scent of the fish deeply. “That sounds great!”

“Sure is.” Matsukawa winked at him. “Plus, there’s a lot of special herbs we can grow to put in this stuff.” He gestured at his own piece of bread.

“Like garlic!” said Hinata, naming one of his favorite kinds of bagels.

“Sure thing,” Hanamaki agreed. “And some particular kinds of weeds, if you know what I mean.”

Lev tilted his head and stared down at him. “Like what?”

“Oh - uh-” Hanamaki floundered and glanced to Matsukawa, who helpfully supplied,

“Dandelions.”

“That’s disgusting!” Lev decided.

* * *

When they made their way even further down the valley, to the fenced ring that Tsukishima had spotted from the air the previous day, Tsukishima elected to stand back. Two dark-haired boys were sparring on the hard-packed sand inside, huffing for breath and letting out occasional grunts and shouts, and Tsukishima had no desire to disturb them - or to acquaint himself with the weapons leaning against the fence by the entrance of the ring, a long knife in a leather sheath and a longbow with a quiver of arrows.

Of course, Lev and Hinata had no such compunctions. Lev loped up and pressed his face between the top rail and the one just below it, and Hinata jumped up to hang off the top rail and announce his presence with a, “Hello!”

The taller boy, with a sweat-damp t-shirt and a hairstyle like a turnip, shrieked and nearly fell over. The shorter one, whose hair was sleek and glossy, went still as a stone.

As Tsukishima watched, their eyes locked onto Hinata’s wings - and then shot to the longbow and the knife on the ground-

“We’re visiting!” announced Lev, cutting the duo off a split second before they jerked towards the weapons. “Our leaders are talking to yours right now.”

Hinata hopped down from the fence and pattered up to the opening. Lev followed, and Tsukishima lingered behind. “So we’re exploring! Hello!”

The pair exchanged a glance. “Talking to Oikawa-san…?”

“And Iwaizumi-san!” said Hinata.

From behind Hinata, Tsukishima shoved his hands into his pockets and leveled a stare at Turnip-head, whose throat bobbed with a gulp.

“I’m Kunimi,” supplied the other boy. “This is Kindaichi.”

“Uh - yeah.” Kindaichi’s gaze flicked away from Tsukishima, back again, and then down to Hinata. He shot another nervous look at the tips of Hinata’s wings over his shoulders. “We were just-” He gestured vaguely at the ring.

“You were sparring, right? Who are you training to fight? Erasers?” Hinata cocked his head at Kindaichi, who had frozen in place. “How does the School know where you guys are?”

“Ah-” Kindaichi glanced at Kunimi, who met his gaze with an impassive stare. “Well-”

_“Kindaichi!”_

Kindaichi startled, and looked in the direction of the shout. Matsukawa was standing outside the pavilion, hands cupped around his mouth. _“Bring your friends up!”_ he called. _“Food’s ready!”_

“R-right!” Kindaichi looked immensely relieved. He glanced nervously again at Hinata, whose intense stare hadn’t wavered, and said, “Sorry, that’s time for dinner.”

He didn’t seem very sorry at all, but Tsukishima allowed him to lead the group of them up the hill towards the pavilion.

* * *

By the time they reached the pavilion, the benches of the picnic tables were almost fillled with green-skinned people. At the head table, Oikawa was seated like a benevolent ruler, with Iwaizumi at his side. Kuroo, Bokuto, and Akaashi were facing the pair of them - they must’ve not moved all afternoon.

Kyoutani was seated alone at the end of a different table, glaring at anyone who tried to join him - until Hinata plopped down next to him, and started chattering away about all the people he’d met that afternoon. Lev and Tsukishima shared a look, and then quietly took seats with Kindaichi and Kunimi at the other end of the table, close enough to listen in on the conversation at the head table.

Matsukawa and Hanamaki were weaving between the tables, balancing bowls of vegetables and deftly placing them down on the tables. Kunimi caught hold of Matsukawa’s wrist as he passed. “Issei, what’s the delay? I’m _hungry.”_

“It’ll be done in a few,” Hanamaki announced as he breezed by. His chef’s hat had flopped all the way down over his left eye.

“You said it was _ready,”_ Kindaichi protested.

“Yeah, cause I thought you’d take longer to get up here!” Hanamaki called over his shoulder, before disappearing into the back room for more food. Matsukawa tossed Kunimi an easy smile and followed.

As they waited, Tsukishima turned his ears towards the head table, and the low conversation there.

Bokuto, Akaashi, and Iwaizumi seemed to be mostly watching, as Kuroo and Oikawa leaned forward to talk over the picnic table. Bokuto was turning his head to look from one to the other as they tossed words back and forth. Akaashi’s shoulders were high with tension. Iwaizumi’s face was set, but unreadable.

“I really am sorry that I couldn’t be of more help,” Oikawa was saying. “But it’s been many, many years since we escaped the School, and if they ever pursued us, they weren’t successful. We have no desire to return, and even if we did, we don’t have your sense of direction to guide us back.”

_Interesting. So they aren’t armed to fight Erasers._

“I’m sure you understand, there’s nothing that can be done,” Oikawa finished.

“There’s something,” Kuroo said, nonchalantly.

Oikawa’s voice tightened. “I told you-”

“But you do know where they are,” Kuroo interrupted. “The eagle clan.”

Oikawa’s tranquil smile didn’t change, but the conversation around them stuttered and quieted. When Tsukishima looked up, Matsukawa was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest and hooded eyes fixed on the head table. Kindaichi had stopped nibbling his nails to shoot a worried look at them.

Kuroo didn’t seem to notice. “We aren’t asking you to accompany us,” he pressed. “I get that you’re afraid of them, but-”

“Kuroo,” Akaashi said quietly, with a note of warning.

“I’m not _wrong,”_ Kuroo pointed out. His smile was sardonic, bitter.

Oikawa returned a smile in kind, tight and vicious, as he snapped, “And yet you have no idea what you’re asking-”

“See,” Kuroo drawled, “even if _you_ have no power to help us, I’m sure that _he_ will.”

The pavilion went dead silent.

Oikawa smiled at Kuroo, very sweetly, and said, “Get out.”

Bokuto blinked. “What?”

Oikawa turned to him, and his eyes were hard as iron as he growled, _“Get out.”_

At the doorway to the back room, Hanamaki dropped a platter of vegetables with a loud _clatter._ He pulled something from his pocket - _a tube? a pipe?_ \- and put his mouth to it - and with a _swwwwwwp_ , something thin and sharp whizzed through the air.

Hinata let out a sharp yelp - and all eyes shot to him. He was sitting frozen, staring at the short blowdart pinched between his fingers, with blood beading quickly from a puncture in his cheek.

And then the pavilion erupted into chaos.

Tsukishima sprang to his feet - a quick glance around him showed weapons bristling at every bench. Kunimi had drawn a long, businesslike knife from the sheath at his side, and was moving around the table towards Lev with eyes narrowed. Kyoutani had pulled a battered baseball bat from somewhere - but he cut his swing short when Hinata cried out in betrayal in front of him. At the head table, Bokuto had leapt up from his seat, with Akaashi at his side. Kuroo and Oikawa were circling each other, and as Tsukishima watched, Kuroo bared his teeth in a feral snarl.

Just across the table from Tsukishima, Kindaichi unslung the longbow from his back and swiftly bent it to pull the string taut. In one smooth motion, he drew an arrow from the quiver at his side and nocked it, fire-hardened ash tip pointing directly towards Tsukishima’s chest. The threat was somewhat diminished by his shaky fingers and his torn face as he chewed frantically at his lip.

 _“Really?”_ Tsukishima had the capacity to bite out.

“Nothing personal,” Kindaichi babbled, “it’s just-”

Tsukishima didn’t wait around for him to finish his sentence. He planted one foot on the bench and sprang up onto the wooden table, snapping out his wings to their full fourteen-foot span - he’d spent enough time around these people to know what freaked them out.

Sure enough, the group flinched back en masse from the breadth of his wings. Over the clamor, Tsukishima caught Bokuto’s voice from the head table-

 _“U and A,”_ he was bellowing. _“U and A!”_ _Up and Away_ \- the flock’s universal signal to skedaddle.

Kuroo spat in Oikawa’s direction, and then he and Lev bounded off side by side, quickly disappearing down the valley. Bokuto, Hinata, and Akaashi took running jumps down the center aisle of the pavilion and leapt off the steps into the air, and a few hard flaps took them each up out of the reach of Kindaichi’s arrows. Tsukishima paused for a moment, shot Oikawa a sugar-sweet smile and a vicious middle finger, and then followed his flock.

Oikawa watched them leave, frown lingering on his lips. Slowly, the rest of the pavilion sat back down and the conversation rose back up, although the noise was subdued, and the occasional laughter brief and half-hearted.

Without turning his head, Oikawa said, “Iwa-chan.”

“They will.”

“Then-”

“On it.”

Oikawa smiled beatifically. “Thank you.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Iwaizumi mumbled, “I wish you didn’t have to be so dramatic about it, though.”

“Iwa-chan, it’s called _chutzpah.”_

* * *

Nobody paused to discuss anything as the four bird kids sped low over the treetops, but the silence of their flight was interrupted by a loud grumble from Hinata’s stomach. Tsukishima didn’t allow himself such excesses of emotion, but privately, he agreed with the sentiment. The dry rations in their packs weren’t anywhere near as appetizing as the platters of fresh food they’d been torn from back in the valley.

Kuroo and Lev arrived at the campsite a few minutes after they did, bursting out of the last twilight before dusk settled over the forest. Akaashi had coaxed a fire into lighting, and the group huddled around it for warmth against the onset of the night’s chill, but the wood was reluctant to catch, and the flames flickered even lower than the mood.

“Well,” Kuroo mumbled, breaking the thick silence, “we could always go back to the E-shaped house.”

Nobody said anything to that.

In the firelight, Kuroo’s face was drawn with distress. He looked younger than Tsukishima had ever seen him.

“You seemed worked up, back there,” Tsukishima observed.

Bokuto stopped fiddling with his hands in his lap and looked up. Akaashi stilled, eyes fixed on Kuroo.

Kuroo shrugged, with a little more force than was necessary. “Well, it’s rather personal. And we didn’t have any other choices.”

“We could search the mountains ourselves,” Hinata offered. “They have to be _somewhere.”_

“That’s probably not the best idea,” said a deep voice.

Hinata squawked with surprise, Tsukishima’s eyes flew wide, Kuroo kind of yelled a little, and Lev was so startled he nearly fell into the fire before Akaashi caught him. In the shadows of the trees around their camp, there stood Iwaizumi, leaning on his cane.

“YOU,” Bokuto said.

“Me,” Iwaizumi agreed, stepping a little further into the light.

“But - but I didn’t even hear you coming!” Lev protested.

Iwaizumi chuckled. “Maybe if we were on the concrete, kiddo. This here is my turf.”

Akaashi’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Oikawa just kicked us out of his camp. What are you here for?”

“I’m offering my help.” Lev sat up straight and stared at Iwaizumi as he spoke. “If you’d like it.”

“Does Oikawa know you’re here?” Kuroo asked.

Iwaizumi’s eyes gleamed with amusement as he hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and rocked backwards onto his heel. “Well, my orders are to tell you that I snuck out here behind his back. But really, he sent me.”

Kuroo stared for a moment, and then broke into snorty laughter. “Oikawa’s a proud one, isn’t he?”

“You’ve got his measure pretty good, yeah.” Iwaizumi grinned down at him. “But don’t worry, I would’ve come at any rate.”

Kuroo cocked an eyebrow. “Even if your leader told you not to?”

Iwaizumi shook his head. “If he’d told me not to, he wouldn’t be my leader.”

Kuroo inclined his head to concede the point, and Bokuto piped up, “Well, come sit, then!” Akaashi murmured agreement, and moved over to make room for Iwaizumi on their rock.

“Ah, thanks.” Iwaizumi stumped over and dropped down next to them, stretching his good leg out in front of him. “I’m glad all y’all are still around. Was worried I’d missed you.”

Kuroo’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “We’re still debating what next.”

Iwaizumi grinned across the circle at him in kind. “Then you’re in luck.”

Tsukishima raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Iwaizumi grunted and reached for his cane. As he talked, he traced shapes in the ground between his foot and his peg, and the other six hybrids leaned forward to watch.

“See, we’re here right now, in the hills down by the coast. And you guys came from-?”

“The east,” Akaashi said vaguely.

Iwaizumi didn’t press it. “Alright. The eagle clan holds territory in the mountains to the north.” He scratched at the ground, tracing out rivers and peaks and the sea. “They range as far as a few hundred miles out, but their main base is here.” He pointed at the largest of the anthill-peaks he’d pushed up. “Tallest mountain around, great big spur off to the east where they roost. They just call it the Mount.

“They aren’t mean-spirited, but I can’t promise that they’ll be friendly. Actually, I can almost guarantee they won’t be. They’re alone on the Mount, and they like it that way. They’re fierce and loyal, and they respect strength and strength alone. And the strongest of them all is Ushijima Wakatoshi.

“If he’s at the Mount, he’ll be at the top. He doesn’t often come down from the peaks. Which means you’re going to have to get yourselves up there. Especially the earthbound ones.” He jerked his chin towards Kuroo and Lev. “There’s only one trail, up the side of the ravine. It’s narrow, steep, rough. They’ll have the jump on you. Keep your heads down, and _don’t_ try to fight. Not on land, and, by god, not in the air.” He glanced up, firelight casting his face into flickering shadows. “I mean it. They’re strong, and they outnumber you two to one, easy. I’m talking to _you,_ short stuff.” Hinata started guiltily, avoiding Iwaizumi’s knowing eyes. “No matter how scrappy you are, they’re warriors.”

Hinata pouted, but didn’t protest aloud.

“Anyway,” Iwaizumi went on, “once you’re up, find Ushijima. Even if the others know what you’re after, they won’t breathe a word unless he tells them to. But he’s not unreasonable. Talk to him and see where you can get.”

Tsukishima said, very carefully, “Iwaizumi-san.”

“Yeah?”

“How do you know so much about them?”

Iwaizumi’s eyes flickered with old shadows in the firelight. By way of answer, he thumped his cane against his peg with a hollow, wooden _clunk._

“So you’re sending us to do your clan’s dirty work.” Kuroo’s voice was perfectly pleasant, but his gaze was keen.

Iwaizumi didn’t seem perturbed, though. He just prodded at the dirt of the fire-circle. “Figured you might think that. Not really anything I can say to convince you otherwise. But I’ve got a feeling you’re going whether I help you or not, yeah?”

He paused.

Nobody answered.

“And besides that,” he added. “You see that kid at camp, the blonde with the black stripes? Really likes flowers?” He nodded at Hinata. “You got on well with him, yeah? He made it out of the School in one piece. Most of us did. Me included.”

“So…?” Akaashi prompted.

“So I’d like it if he could stay that way. If some of our kind could work together instead of ripping each other’s legs off for once.” Iwaizumi shifted his weight onto his good leg and his cane, and pulled himself up off Akaashi’s rock. “Oh - and one more thing.” He shrugged his rucksack off one shoulder and rummaged around in it for a moment before pulling out a parcel wrapped in brown paper. “This one’s from me.” He tossed the package at Tsukishima, who caught it on reflex, and nodded at the group. “Later.” And he turned and melted back into the dark forest, as quickly and silently as he had come.

Nobody moved for a moment, then Hinata sprang over to hang off Tsukishima’s shoulders. _“Tsukishima, open it already-”_

_“Get off me, you gremlin-”_

Kuroo scooted over, reaching out for the package. “If you don’t want to-”

Tsukishima batted his hand away, just on principle, and as Kuroo swatted him right back, he slipped the package over to Akaashi on his other side. They pulled off the strings, letting the paper fall away, and then sucked in a breath short enough that five other pairs of eyes shot towards them.

Akaashi tilted the package forward, and a quiet _ohhh_ rose up as they began unpacking its contents.

The top was all fresh - fruits and vegetables like they’d seen at the camp, new loaves of Matsukawa and Hanamaki’s bread, strips of baked river-trout from the dinner table. Underneath that, they found hardier stuff - dried fruits and nuts and granola, salted fish packed for travel, a hunk of smoky cheese, and, at the very bottom, a tiny pouch that Akaashi pulled open to reveal six small, dark chocolates.

Lev cried out with excitement and lunged forward for one of the chocolates, and Bokuto wasn’t far behind. Akaashi surreptitiously plucked one out for themself, and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “dessert first” before popping it into their mouth. Tsukishima, Kuroo, and Hinata were still frozen, staring at the box in awe.

“Well, don’t just sit there.” Akaashi nudged Kuroo with their foot, and he startled out of his trance. “Someone has to cook this.”

“And by _someone,”_ said Bokuto, who had scarfed down his own chocolate in half a bite, “they mean you!”

Kuroo rolled his eyes, but he made no complaint save a muttered _I do all the work around here_ before he moved to pull the old iron pot out of his pack and stoke up the fire.


End file.
